CONSTRUCTION works of the East Coast Demerara (ECD) road widening and improvement project from Belfield to Mahaica and Sheriff Street to Orange Nassau on the Railway Embankment have begun.

According to the Ministry of Public Works, the services of China Railway First Group Company Limited has been engaged and work commenced between Belfield and Bachelor’s Adventure along the ECD corridor on Friday last and will end on May 7, 2023.

In 2014, the Government of Guyana awarded the contract to China Railway First Group Company Limited and a few years later, Guyana and China signed a $9.6B (US$45.5M) concessional loan for completion of the widening of the road between Better Hope and Belfield and Guyana contributed some $2.7B to the project.

The government advanced plans in 2023 to upgrade several major roads across Georgetown as part of the overarching objective to significantly transform Guyana’s infrastructural landscape.
Over $150B has been set aside in Budget 2023 for the advancement of major infrastructural projects across the country.

Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh had said that the government has been reorienting the focus of the national budget to invest heavily in the things that matter for long-term economic growth, particularly as it pertains to addressing the country’s infrastructural gap.

“We recognise the importance of seizing the moment to lay the foundation for investment; we see this as the moment to ensure that we address historic infrastructure impediments to long-term economic growth. Notwithstanding emphasis on infrastructure, we are doing all of this in the context where we maintain a disciplined fiscal stance,” Dr Singh related.

The government has done this through a conscious decision to shift expenditure from being heavy on government consumption of goods and services to a greater focus on government investment in infrastructure.

Putting the foregoing into a statistical context, in 2019, the previous government spent less than a quarter of public expenditure, the equivalent of some 22.7 percent of it, on public investment, and the remainder on public consumption.

Conversely, the 2023 budget saw a marked shift from consumption towards public investment, with almost half of the $781.9B budget, or 49.6 per cent of it, being devoted to public investment.
The budget saw massive increases in key infrastructural sectors such as roads and bridges, housing, and power generation. In 2019, total investment on roads and bridges through the budget amounted to $11.8B while in 2023, some $131.5B was allocated to this area. In the area of housing development, less than $1B was spent in 2019, but in the 2023 budget, that area received $53.1B.