BY current measure, Guyana can become the richest nation in South America, so some are understandably wondering whether this is a healthy new start, or the beginning of its end.
Bigger than all European nations that earlier colonised it, and larger than most US states, Guyana is also home to less than a million people, many living below the poverty line.
But the government is committed to using a low-carbon development strategy to prevent the so-called ‘Dutch Disease’ at bay, by redirecting energy revenues into massive infrastructural projects to benefit all; like the scores of new schools, 12 new hospitals, a $1.9 Billion gas-to-energy project, and two main highways, plus much-more, in less than three years.

Underscoring the inevitable cost-of-living rise that many Guyanese cannot yet cope with, fair observers also note that oil-and- gas investments are creating continuing employment.
They also debunk the insulting claims that Guyana lacks the brains to utilise its oil wealth properly, by pointing to the good management that, in their considered view, can result, in the next few years, in Guyana becoming the richest nation in South America.

Likewise, most unbiased observers conclude that Guyana has a very fruitful future, some noting that what it’s done in the past five years has been very fruitful, in terms of attracting investments from Exxon and other Oil Majors, at one of the fastest investment and development rates ever seen.
But even the critics will agree that distribution of new wealth to poor people in developing countries (like Guyana and the Caribbean, Africa, India, Europe, USA, Canada and everywhere else) doesn’t happen overnight, but instead takes structural planning, and time.

However, while the naysayers and Doomsday Prophets continue to dabble in awful thoughts of shock and awe about Guyana’s supposed inability to learn from others’ mistakes, the nation’s finances have been in demonstrably good hands, and its future challenges are already yielding opportunities for new and bigger plans for short, medium and long-term national development.
Take the carbon credits scheme that virtually takes scheming out of caring for Guyana’s First Peoples, who’ve always been last-in-line for development but are now being told carbon-credit earnings will somehow not benefit them.

Or the gas-to-shore plan that will cut energy costs for every Guyanese, but which they are being told will not happen, by those who promised to put dollars directly into every household monthly before first securing the arrangements and agreements to ensure translation and transition from words to action.
The current administration has taken on the new current challenges without fear of the usual criticism from regular quarters, or being overly concerned about the meandering melodies of those hell-bent on always shifting goalposts when losing.

The current administration is approaching the first three years of its current term, evidently aware that today’s challenges are also global and regional, and therefore local solutions always have external dimensions, given how the world turns today.
As the country forges on, positive and progressive thinkers are also silently wondering about two other great challenges Guyana will face, having to do with neighbourly ties and homely affairs.
First is future Guyana-Venezuela ties, which is going through yet another stage of mutual reiteration of century-old positions etched in stone on both sides, at the end of which both sides will agree to continue to ‘agree to disagree’, while also addressing the practical contemporary challenges and opportunities of shared neighbourly will and cooperation towards common prosperity, vis-à-vis holding-on (only) to history while northern neighbors dance across common southern borders.

It’s very clear that those in Caracas with eyes on Guyana are not today as much interested in owning Rupununi savannah grass as in who gets the gas that lies below the Essequibo Region. So, then, will Guyana’s overall Venezuela strategy forever be based on ‘Not a blade of grass!’?
Secondly, my troublesome-sounding earlier reference to ‘homely affairs’ has to do with Guyana’s extreme underpopulation, vis-à-vis its wealthy growth estimates, and the need to consider whether the plan is to make every Guyanese a millionaire (in US dollars) in short time, or to grow the population over a longer time to spread the growing wealth.

So, should Guyana invest in population-growth by guaranteeing future wedded couples and children a sound and healthy future like Gadaffi did with Libya’s oil wealth, or should the country just continue expanding its healthy wealth to become an emirate-like jewel in the Caribbean’s development crown?
Take the future of mobility. With the very-welcome announcement of a return to railway transport, will it be a revival of the old system on new tracks, or a mixed approach that will include high-speed railways links from the Mabaruma (North West District) to other hinterland and coastal regions, as well as between Georgetown and Linden — and from Guyana to Suriname, French Guiana, Brazil and Venezuela?

Silica City will show how Guyana’s oil and gas will energise living in Soesdyke in the Age of the Internet of Things; and with a thriving aerospace industry next-door in French Guiana, who’s to say Guyana won’t ever seek to diversify and energize its non-oil base by investing in future space technology? Or safe space tourism?
Some young entrepreneurs are complaining of access to investment finance. So, after addressing housing needs for young professionals, will the government now have to set-up a special fund for young property owners, or should it revisit the map and develop more Silica Cities inland as part of a new land distribution system that will avoid Georgetown becoming another Hong Kong (with not an inch of space available for housing)?

These are the kinds of thoughts on the minds of those looking into Guyana’s future, not through peeping periscopes with limited scope and vision, but with wider eyes spanning beyond the basic borders and boundaries that have traditionally circumscribed thinking to the circumferences of limited peripheries that don’t expand beyond seas and skies, zones and horizons.