St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister  Dr Ralph Gonsalves,

during his recent visit here, lauded our hosing programme, offering that the magnitude of Guyana’s housing development is an extraordinary one and a success story which should be shared with the Region and farther afield.
He said: “I do not know of any programme of this magnitude anywhere else in the Caribbean, in the Eastern Caribbean nor in the OECS.”
During a visit to several schemes along the East Bank, including Eccles, Mocha-Arcadia and Providence, accompanied by Housing and Water Minister Irfaan Ali, the Vincentian leader lauded the policies and initiatives undertaken by the government to make access to housing affordable for its citizens.
He explained: “We in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are reputed to have the best housing programme, but this one, the scale of it, because of the amount of vacant land you have, is extraordinary, and the prices are very good. The people of Guyana – I don’t know if they fully appreciate what they have here.”
Dr Gonsalves is so much impressed and overwhelmed by our housing development that he extended an invitation for local private developers to travel to St Vincent and to work towards further enhancing  housing development there.
This invitation to our local contractors is most welcome and opens a vista of opportunities for our local contractors to spread their wings across the Region.
Dr Gonsalves also made a very notable observation that the developmental model adopted in Guyana also fosters the integration of private sector development, taking into consideration low-middle income and middle-income settlements.
This observation by the St. Vincent leader augurs well for the broader Caribbean integration process which has not been moving at the desired pace, even though it has been several years now since countries in the Region clinched an agreement on the CSME.
However, Dr Gonsalves’s observations on our housing programme are well known to most Guyanese, except the cynics among us, who in their chronic state of negativity, do not see even an iota of positive development in our country and continue to paint a negative image of this country.
However, their negativity will not prevent our country from continuously making impressive strides in every sector of the Guyanese economy.
As Dr. Gonsalves had earlier noted, when he spoke about our economic achievements: “ Guyana is the shining light in the Caribbean”.