GUYANA recently hosted and participated in several regional and international gatherings, including the first Africa-Caribbean Trade Investment Conference, outreach to Canada and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and African nations focusing on increasing and accelerating trade and investment is a matter of utmost regional and international import to all nations on both continents.
The Guyana conference came just two years after the first African Union-CARICOM Summit in 2021, one year after the two regions agreed to increase possibilities for trade and investment exchanges and just months after most CARICOM nations entered into a related pact with the continent’s biggest development bank, the Afrexim Bank.
The October 17-19 Canada-CARICOM Summit, where Guyana and other Caribbean nations’ leaders held their first summit with Justin Trudeau, the son of a traditional supporter of the Caribbean, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, will hopefully open the way for accelerated advances in revisiting the relevance of old Canada-Caribbean arrangements in new times.
For example, to what extent is there sufficient reciprocal benefit in facilitation of ease of trade in textiles between Canada and the Caribbean today?
There are obviously more urgent issues to be addressed today, including the future of the region’s concerns about Haiti’s future, but the Canada summit should have allowed for examination of what the current challenges are and how they can be managed.
Guyana’s recent annual agricultural conference also came on the heels of the introduction of agriculture as a curriculum subject in schools in the nation responsible for Food Safety and Security in CARICOM and that’s leading the region’s bold march towards decreasing the region’s food-import bill by 25% in 2025.
And last weekend’s 2023 GuyExpo continued the unbroken annual legacy of the first PPP/Civic administrations after the restoration of democracy in 1992, when Guyana started showing-off what ‘Made in Guyana’ can really mean for the nation’s export trade.
Guyana also joined CARICOM last week in starting a fresh new relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has itself also been increasing its outreach to neighbours and the developing world as it loops with others in the BRICS alliance that is already changing the way the world views itself.
Every recent international outreach by Guyana is fruitful to the region: the Afrexim Bank will help the Caribbean and Africa find new ways to trade without having to rely on any other foreign currency, or to helplessly and eternally comply with unfair regulations that deter bilateral trade between friendly brother-and-sister nations.
Likewise, Saudi Arabia’s extended hands of financial friendship, whether through loans of grants, will also help the region advance its efforts towards food security under Guyana’s leadership.
Traditional trade partners are seeking to strengthen existing ties and new partners are knocking furiously on our doors as Guyana continues to develop as the new regional economy with added continental and global partnership possibilities.
Guyana also continues to husband its new resources and prepares to grow their use as the roots for a future that will also allow this country to assist, while working with its CARICOM neighbours and global and continental partners, towards realisation of a new international human order that will put people first and transcends political, racial, cultural and religious boundaries, in pursuit of the golden dream of a united Guyana of plenty, with enough for one and all – and to share with needy neighbours.
Guyana’s destiny continues to rest in very good hands; and CARICOM can only benefit more and better, together.
