—President Ramotar
THE Guyana Government will be looking at new areas of development to take the country forward through an expansion in the area of natural resources in the near future.

This announcement was made by President Donald Ramotar while addressing a graduation ceremony yesterday at the National Cultural Centre.

President Ramotar said: “We are looking at new areas of development. Manganese, we have started to look at that area, and very soon they will come into commercial operation, and also bauxite.”

President Ramotar pointed out that the bauxite industry will soon see establishment of a new bauxite company, while the two previous mines will expand production and work on introducing new products.

At the same time, the president said, he foresees a thriving agriculture sector, which is another very important growth pole in Guyana.

President Ramotar said that, with a growing population, the country will be looking at ways and means of ensuring there is enough in place to maintain self sufficiency in food.

“I see agriculture, too, as another very important (pole) in our country. Only recently, you would have seen and heard about the United Nations’ figures which have seven billion people in the world, and they say the population is growing rapidly,” he pointed out.

He said that since the world’s population is growing extensively, the best way forward is to work towards a solution that would ensure the stability of Guyana in years to come.

“(In) the next few years, we will have about eight billion people in the world, and that is putting a lot of pressure on the world at large,” the President said.

The Guyanese Head of State said that already rich countries have been buying into the smaller, undeveloped countries so as to secure their peoples, and such steps will be taken in this regard.

“If you follow the trend of some very rich countries, you will see that they are going (to) the poor countries to buy land, not to grow food for those poor countries but to secure their own food supply,” he added.

He highlighted the fact that the price for fuel keeps growing, which has resulted in many countries looking at alternative sources of fuel especially in the area of bio-fuel, thus the rise in food prices on the global market.

He said: “The price of fuel has gone so high that many countries are looking for alternative fuels, and one of that area is the bio-fuel using corn, sugar cane, cassava, potatoes, and other products to make fuel; and this is causing the prices of food to go up internationally, and it is creating political problems in the world, like (what currently obtains in) the Middle East.”

He described Guyana as a fortunate country, since the country has land and water readily available. This, he said, is one less challenge to trouble Guyana.

Meanwhile, the President highlighted the fact that mining has already become very important to the country’s economy, largely because the price of gold is very high. “I envisage that it will stay high for some time,” he said.

“When the international economy is doing very well, the price of gold goes down; and when the economy is doing badly, the price goes up. And then they are now talking about double-dipped recession, then you can anticipate that this price will stay up for a time yet to come,” he said.