THE PPP/C administration has embarked on an aggressive developmental agenda. Among the several elements of that development matrix are job creation, infrastructural development and an enhanced delivery of social goods including education, health, housing and water.
During a recent press conference, Vice-President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo indicated that part of this development drive was being fuelled by efforts to enhance economic diplomacy with international partners.

According to the Vice-President, this agenda is facilitated by a robust diplomatic initiative, both at the bilateral and multilateral levels. Emphasis is now being placed on economic diplomacy which has opened new doors to financial institutions. Only recently, Guyana secured a loan to the amount of US$150 which will be substantially utilized to advance the housing drive.
According to Dr. Jagdeo, this loan would allow for an acceleration of the housing programme. The PPP/C has already created 30,000 of the 50,000 house lots promised in its 2020 Elections Manifesto. And this is despite the fact that several prime lands that could have been used for housing- development purposes were given away by the previous APNU+AFC to cronies and friends.

The PPP/C has been doing an extraordinary job in terms of resource mobilization which is so critical to advance the massive infrastructural development currently underway. This resulted, as noted by Dr. Jagdeo, from a shift from political to economic diplomacy where the economic interests of the country take precedence over political or ideological considerations.

This is indeed how it should be. The fact is that we live in a new and changing global dispensation in which economic interests are paramount. The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s has brought in its wake an end to a system of ‘spheres of influence’ in which access to development financing was largely based on where a country stood on the ideological divide.

Guyana during the past years paid a heavy price for its ideological meanderings, especially during the Burnham regime, reaching a point where the country was literally blacklisted by the international financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which at one time regarded the country under the then PNC regime as ‘uncreditworthy.’

Thankfully, all of that has changed following the restoration of democratic rule on October 5, 1992. Under the PPP/C, the country not only restored financial credibility but also benefitted from substantial developmental financing by way of debt relief, grants and concessional funding.
Former President and Vice-President Dr. Jagdeo must be commended for the role he played in debt write-offs, both under the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPIC) and the Enhanced HIPIC terms and the subsequent mobilization of financial resources under the Low Carbon Development Strategy. The most recent carbon credits payment to the country is attributable to the hard and painstaking work done by the former President.

President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali’s high-profile and proactive role in attracting foreign investments to the country has also been paying handsome dividends. Guyana is now seen as a country full of investment opportunities. Private sector collaboration between Guyana and several countries, both from the east and the west, has increased significantly over the past few years.
This is due in large measure to the emerging oil and gas sector, but also to an aggressive foreign policy based on economic diplomacy, aimed at the continuing enhancement of the standard of living of the Guyanese people.

In the final analysis, the efficacy of foreign policy is determined by the extent to which it promotes the domestic agenda. Guyana under the previous PNC regime had an over-sized and bloated foreign service, but with little to show for it in terms of foreign investments in the country. Thankfully, all of that has changed and there is now a positive correlation between foreign-policy initiatives and advancement of the economic and social well-being of the Guyanese people.