THE recent specious Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) report on Guyana’s economic situation is simply an attack on this country’s positive level of economic performance in 2009.
It clearly seeks to make liars out of the Government of Guyana and the Minister of Finance, directly.  To purport, as they purported, that the figures contained in the 2010 Budget report is incorrect and raises questions as to its validity is tantamount to calling the Minister and his department, not to mention all of the sectors that provided information for the Finance Ministry to carry out its assessment on Guyana’s economic position, liars.
To suggest too, that the private sector, whose investment in this country over the past five years or more, is shadowed with unease and discontent is a gross and incorrect evaluation of the current climate in this country. If the private sector’s outlook of the country’s economic prospects is really as “not-optimistic” as the report would have us believe, can they explain why is there such a construction boom on the part of the private sector in Guyana?
Can the authors of this faulty report please explain too why the nature of development that was examined in their report only sought out the manufacturing sectors, which has admittedly been hard-hit by the global financial downturn? Is this really the only means of judging economic growth within a country such as ours?
Guyana, like many other countries across the world and within the Caribbean, is a developing nation and we can only develop with aid and assistance from our more prosperous partners. These partners and agencies have also been majorly affected by the financial crisis and as such lending and investing has been severely curbed.Unemployment levels as well have been high the world over, without showing significant signs of easing.
Despite this however, Guyana has been able to tap into new means of acquiring monies for our development and has been successful in doing so.
This aside, the gold, rice and sugar and other mining sectors showed significant growth in the past few years and have been steadily increasing every year and as mentioned before the local and foreign private sectors continue to invest in Guyana’s economy.
Given this evidence it is hard to comprehend how the EIU could come to the conclusions that they did, making these spurious remarks regarding our economy and having them reprinted in the local media as gospel.