UNQUESTIONABLY, Guyana’s economic condition is in a parlous state. However, the Irfaan Ali-led administration is not daunted, and is forging ahead with developmental plans, programmes and policies, while simultaneously, through countrywide Cabinet outreaches, listening to the concerns and addressing the dire existential needs of the citizens of the land, all clamouring for facilitative mechanisms to better their lives and lifestyles. In a recent television interview, Senior Finance Affairs Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, elucidated at length on configurations that are determinants of key macroeconomic indicators and their development trends, and outlined the factors that led to Guyana’s retrogression in social development and economic growth patterns over the interim years from 2015 to 2020. One of the primary inhibitors to growth, he averred, was the neglect of, and punitive measures that constrained common business procedures in the country: from starting a project to closing a business, with the consequence of a decimated private sector, and a nation in a survival crisis, primarily because of widespread job loss.
During the past five years, the laws of the land regarding the issuing of contracts and other anomalous applications to equitable and judicious administration were breached with impunity, which precipitated the downward spiral of the country’s fiscal system, decadence in labour practices, property rights regulation peculiarities etcetera, all of which eviscerated Guyana’s engine of growth.

One of the hardest hit sectors was agriculture, the lodestar of every PPP/C governments’ economic thrust. However, once again, under another PPP/C administration, the agriculture sector is being revitalised and re-energised in innovative ways. Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha last Tuesday met with newly-appointed members of the Board of Directors of the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA), the Pesticide and Toxic Chemicals Control Board (PTCCB) and the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB). Minister Mustapha adjured the newly-appointed GSA Board of Directors that, in view of Government’s vested interest in further developing the school, given the role it plays in delivering quality agriculture-focused education, his hope to have the school extend its services to other regions be fructified by the Board. “The Guyana School of Agriculture is one of a kind. I know for a fact that even though other countries have senior institutions offering programmes in agriculture, students travel from all over the Caribbean to attend our school. We, too, have the University of Guyana with an agriculture programme, but the knowledge offered at GSA is unmatched.” Minister Mustapha told the Directors of the Pesticide and Toxic Chemicals Control Board that regulating the use of pesticides and toxic chemicals is crucial in Guyana. He said, “Large companies are signalling their desire to invest in the country, and they will need permission and oversight in the area of toxic chemicals. You will have to ensure that you move the Board forward.”

To the members of the GRDB Board, he said, inter alia, “We have to ensure we develop and move this industry forward. I’ve taken a ‘hands on’ approach to dealing with matters pertaining to the rice industry,” while reminding them that rice remains one of Guyana’s largest foreign exchange earners. Under the administration of the former PPP/C Government, small farmers’ groups were introduced to a special three-year financial facility of some $220M, $180M in grants, and $40M in low-interest loans, which was intended to facilitate their expansion, and allow them to farm through best practices. Under the Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Development (READ) programme was established the Enterprise Development Fund (EDF), through which support to small farmers was provided. Drainage and irrigation, which is an essential prerequisite for any successful agricultural programme, was prioritised. Additionally, as a consequence of a special request from the Guyana Rice Producers’ Association (GRPA)’s General-Secretary, Dharamkumar Seeraj, directly to then President Bharrat Jagdeo, the government had given duty-free concessions on fuel, agricultural machinery and spares.

The decline of the agricultural sector under another PNC-led government has once again precipitated the free-fall of all agriculture-based industries, primarily rice, sugar, cash-crops and their manufactured by-products; with the rice industry taking another severe downturn, near to annihilation, except for the RPA collaborating with the private sector to sustain/attain markets, and fight for farmers’ rights with millers. The return of another PPP/C administration, which has always shown itself amenable to advocacy on the farmers’ behalf, especially through representation by the RPA GS Seeraj, who takes a hands-on, people/farmer-centric approach to administration, will enable the eventual concretisation of the RPA’s projected plans, which were forcibly curtailed during the preceding five years, which include, but are not limited to, the provision of advantageous terms on the acquisition of seed paddy, fertiliser and fuel that were intended to boost rice production, and make the sector even more viable than in the years preceding 2015.
Agriculture has once again assumed its role as one of Guyana’s major developmental planks, as it did prior to 2015, when this country achieved the UN MDG in food security, through government’s facilitating mechanisms to enable the phenomenal successes of the “grow more” campaign, and “The Jagdeo Initiative for Agriculture”, which was adopted by Caribbean nations in efforts to emulate Guyana in minimising their food import bill, and boost their food security.