-says things moving slowly forward, but getting better

By Ravin Singh

PRESIDENT David Granger remains hopeful that things will, in 2017, get better for Guyana, despite consistent reports of a sluggish economy, which is nevertheless growing.The President expressed this view on Thursday during his weekly television show ‘The Public Interest’, aired on the state-owned National Communications Network (NCN).

The World Bank had, in June, projected that Guyana’s economy would grow four per cent this year, but had forecasted a smaller percentage of growth in the coming years. Guyana’s economy grew three per cent in 2015, down from 3.8 per cent in 2014 and 5.2 per cent in 2013.

And according to the bank’s latest forecast, which is subject to change due to global circumstances, Guyana’s economy is expected to grow an additional 3.9 per cent in 2017, and 3.8 per cent in 2018.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan more recently announced that, for the first half of 2016, the country’s economy grew 2 per cent. And with a small but steady growth rate, the President has expressed the view that the country is doing “quite well”. He contends that the growth is quite sustainable, and things will get better in the coming year.

“In 2017, things will be better. We will be presenting our budget in a few months’ time. Things are moving slowly forward, but we are getting better all the time,” the President opined.

Despite current circumstances, causing some in the business community to express concerns, President Granger maintains that his views are quite hopeful for the economy. He pointed out, though, that in light of the current circumstances, he has always pointed out the danger of Guyana’s economy and overreliance on the six sisters — gold, diamond, bauxite, sugar, rice and timber.

Some of these issues, he said, have arisen because the country was not able to transform its economy in 50 years. However, he boldly pointed out that the manifestation of some of these economic issues could be credited to the problems the APNU+AFC Government inherited upon assumption to office last year.

“There were lots of problems. For instance, we had to continue bailing out the sugar industry at the rate of nearly $10B a year. We have an underperforming Skeldon factory; we have a completely dysfunctional fibre-optic cable project; we have a lot of unpaid debts in the courts; we have some amount of environmental damage in the mining and logging areas; we have diseases that we have to combat,” the head of state said.

He explained that these are just some of the issues which require “extraordinary expenditure” on the part of the administration. As such, he noted, Government is trying to deal with those issues while addressing the failures it inherited from the previous administration and the underperformance of the major sectors of the economy.

President Granger maintains, though, that Guyana is poised to do better in the coming years, and he remains hopeful for a bright future for the country.