GOVERNMENT’S budgetary facilitation of private-sector investments can propel Guyana into becoming a developed country, which is not merely an optimistic hope, but a doable and achievable reality.

Guyana was rated on international developmental indices as being on par with Haiti before the PPP/C administration assumed the primary executive offices in the land in October of 1992.
Graphed during the PNC administration as the least developed nation in the world, with a crippling debt burden, Guyana’s development under the astute leadership provided by successive PPP/C Presidents, guided by the brilliant developmental blueprint crafted by the visionary Dr. Cheddi Jagan took off like a runaway train until, after a relatively short timespan of approximately two decades, Guyana was being recognised by the world as a middle-income developing country, and described by Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as “The only shining star in the Caribbean.”

The popular prognosis heralded great things for this nation, because the focus of the PPP/C administrations – then and now — is to make Guyana a modern and developed country; and Guyana had indeed been inexorably moving from a middle-income developing country to becoming, in the not-too-distant future, a developed country.
But for the country to achieve such a status it has to be a joint effort by all stakeholders, working in conjunction and in cooperation with government. There have been in the past multiple successful partnerships between the government, private sector and other stakeholders to work together to create of Guyana a modern society. This compaction of diverse interests, which should primarily be geared toward the development of people, is essential, since achieving the status of a highly developed country is heavily dependent on people’s development.
Some of the measures the government had initiated to expand and strengthen people-power was to bolster education as the central key and with empowerment facilitation being the central focus.

Since the PPP/C first took control of the affairs of state, the country had progressed with a transformation that was being described as near-miraculous, so greatly had the national socio-economic landscape been altered.

But, regrettably, this progressive developmental paradigm took a relentless and rapid retrogression in every sector, with the advent of another PNC Government in 2015, when the PPP/C was forced to demit office by questionable elections in 2015: an election petition was filed but was never heard.

The post-2015 reversal of Guyana’s developmental trajectory brought this country into a bankrupted state, with a debt-accrual of billions of dollars.
One can only imagine to what levels this country would have reached if there had not been a transition of government in 2015, especially with the discovery of massive reserves of oil, instead of being subjected to the (mal) administration of a destructive and corrupt cabal bent of stymieing, and even reversing social development and economic growth in the country.
One of the worst disincentives to private investment in Guyana is the high energy cost, which sends overheads skyrocketing, especially in the manufacturing sector; and the PPP/C Government had attempted to address this problem through hydropower, but had reached the usual developmental roadblocks in the form of the PNC in opposition, which used every armament in their arsenal to shoot down the project.

It is a proven fact that not having cheap energy is one of the most prohibitive factors that has impeded Guyana’s manufacturing sector from surging.
However, despite the setback with the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, the recently elected President Ali is adamant that the pursuit of alternative energy will be prioritized, so that government can provide cheap energy for the development of a strong industrial manufacturing sector and a strong processing sector. With a progressing agricultural sector that can easily develop into an agrobindustrial complex, Guyana is once again climbing global developmental graphs.

During the 2020 Budget debate, various government MPs outlined future transformative plans geared to making the dream of taking Guyana from a middle-income developing country to a developed country, and one could only hope that the joint opposition would allow good sense and patriotism to prevail over self-centred agendas to work along on these visionary plans and projects that would benefit all Guyanese and create of this country, not only “the only shining star of the Caribbean,” but the shining star of the world.
Successive PPP/C Governments have always held out an outstretched hand to the opposition and all stakeholders in the nation, with scant success of co-operation from the joint opposition; and history will record their negative contributions to the development of this nation. The ball is in the opposition’s court.