–gov’t navigated lost time, challenges to build out Guyana, President Ali says

REFLECTING on the significant strides made towards the development and transformation of Guyana, President Dr. Irfaan Ali has said that his government had to navigate lost time and many challenges to be on a path to building a strong and resilient economy.
The Head of State made those remarks during his address at the opening of the recently concluded International Building Expo.

President Ali, while noting that it is important and necessary to reflect on some things in life, said that all of what has been achieved in the last four years was done as a result of the hard work of a lot of Guyanese.
“When you say four years, we did not have four years in totality before us. As you’re aware, in the last four years, we lost almost one year completely with ‘COVID’. We lost more than six months from two floods; we lost time also with extensive and long drought season we had,” the President said.
Further, he indicated that time was also lost as a result of what was taking place in the international supply chain.

With this, he said that they also have to manage within the international environment with rising inflation and rising costs of goods, services and even transportation, along with growing energy costs.
Moving from one crisis to the other, from the global pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to the drying up of the Panama Canal, he said that all of these challenges had to be faced head-on.
“So, in effect, what we had really was two years of solid work before us, and all of these achievements you see today, it is just about two years of hard work, with a time we had lost as a result of things we had no control of,” he expressed.
This, he noted, tells of the scale and magnitude of the effort and level of commitment to guard against the global issues.

While all of these challenges were combatted, it was done, and inflation was kept in lower single digits, and the cost of living was the best in the region as a result of specific policy measures introduced by the government to cushion the effects of the rising international costs.
He added: “There is no policy-framing metrics that I think would have had a more holistic approach to national development, and to withstanding global shock than the one we put together.”
Looking ahead, President Ali said that work is ongoing to see what can be done better, and what policies can be sharpened in relation to some of the challenges that are still being faced, and address the challenges that will be confronted in the immediate and medium term.
The President affirmed: “We are already thinking about how we will mitigate some of these challenges in the medium term, and how are we going to deliver the most modern, transformative Guyana to the Guyanese people by 2030, because the path to that development; the path to transformation, the dream that you are dreaming of, is now well underway, and we are on that path of building one of the strongest, most sustainable, resilient economies in the world.”