While acknowledging that there has been a slight downturn in business, due primarily to falling commodity prices and unemployment, Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin yesterday insisted that Guyana’s economy is not in crisis and government has a long-term plan for development.
“Our economy is not in any sort of crisis…there is a long-term vision for Guyana that has evolved from our experiences and from the experiences of other countries into something that we can all proudly own and work towards achieving,” Gaskin told attendees at a business luncheon organised by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) at the Pegasus Hotel.
“Our government will prioritise the long-term sustainable development of Guyana’s economy; and our government would like to do this in partnership with a strong and independent private sector,” he added.
President of the GMSA Eon Caesar, in his address, told the gathering which included members of the diplomatic corps, that Gaskin was brought to the forum to talk about government’s strategies and programmes “to bring the economy out of its current slump, while simultaneously building the environment that will create a business class out of ordinary citizens.”
Caesar pointed out that the GMSA for years, has been calling for the development of value-added industries, as for too long, Guyana has been stuck in a mode of primary production and export of primary products, such as rice, sugar and lumber among others.
“We are aware that the entire world caught a cold when the prices for oil and gas took a nosedive more than a year ago. Then, Guyana’s economy was knocked sideways when global prices for gold slumped. Our mineral prospectors lost a lot of money and equipment. Venezuela cancelled our main rice market, while the sugar industry struggles to regain some measure of balance,” said Caesar.
He believes that government needs to assist in broadening the availability of skills for the entire sector so that the country moves away from being vulnerable to international prices and market availability.
“We have to witness the start of outreach programmes that are badly needed and, for example, show to growers of lemons in Mahaica Creek the best ways to get their produce to city markets or to importing countries like Aruba and Dominica. Perhaps then, these farmers will be able to earn money from their produce, and people in the city won’t have to pay $200 for one lemon,” Caesar asserted.
In his presentation, Gaskin pointed to positive indicators for Guyana, among them, continued positive growth rate, unlike neighbouring economies such as Brazil, Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago which are in serious trouble and even crisis, to emphasise that the country is not in a crisis.
“Venezuela’s economy is in crisis, Brazil’s is in trouble with negative growth for the second consecutive year and no clear end in sight. Trinidad and Tobago is projecting negative growth of 2% yet again. Barbados is unlikely to grow by more than one half of a percentage point this year, following a 0.3% growth in 2014 and 0.8% in 2015. Suriname’s economy grew by 1.8% in 2014 and 0.2% in 2015. As mentioned earlier, Guyana’s economy grew by 3% last year. This year our economy is projected to grow by around 4%. I repeat, we are not the ones with an economic crisis on our hands,” the minister declared.
Using figures and other data to back up his assertions, Gaskin said while he acknowledges that “everything was not good with the economy,” it must be brought to the fore that the claims of Guyana being in economic crisis are simply not true.
“You may think that I am carefully avoiding some of the specific problems currently facing local businesses, particularly manufacturers, but a lot of those problems are captured in the broad areas that I have just outlined especially when the competiveness and doing business indices are disaggregated into their respective components. And this will become more apparent when we look (at) how we’re going to get to where we’d like to be,” he said.
He acknowledged that the indicators reveal several areas in which a lot of work will need to be done if government wants to encourage investments in the economy.
‘Visions and plans’
“So where would we like to be as a country? Over the last few decades, I’ve listened to thousands of Guyanese saying pretty much the same things in different ways, different tones and with different levels of specificity about the future of Guyana. So deep down inside, I believe we’re not very far apart when it comes to where we’d like our country to be in another 15 or 20 years. Somehow, a vision has to emerge that we can take collective ownership of and use as a national blueprint to guide our efforts and keep us focused on what we want to achieve in the long-term,” the minister said.
To this end, he laid out the visions and plans that government has to develop the business sector.
“A green economy, powered with affordable and renewable energy, driven by foreign earnings derived from exports of a range of value-added goods and services is well within our means to achieve. So too is the sustainable growth of this economy and the sustainable exploitation of our natural resources so that generations of Guyanese to come can enjoy our rich patrimony which we ourselves were fortunate to inherit when we were born,” Gaskin said.
“You will have heard that Guyana is now a signatory to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. Each of these goals is further broken down into a set of very specific, targeted and time-bound objectives. In addition, you will have heard that our Government intends to prioritise the development and improvement of infrastructure in order to make our economy more attractive and more competitive. This includes our national transportation infrastructure such as roads, aerodromes, bridges and ports, our sea defence infrastructure, our energy infrastructure and our information and communications technology infrastructure,” he asserted.
According to Gaskin, Guyana will become a model for sustainable economic development and he asked the business community and the nation to partner with the nation’s leaders to develop the economy.
‘No short term solution’
However, Junior Vice-President of the George-town Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Nicholas Boyer told Gaskin during the question and answer segment at the luncheon that his businesses, and others he knows of, are experiencing about a 30 to 40 percent decline in sales, due to falling commodity prices and reduced employment.
“All of these are going to trickle through the economy. My question is very simple: ‘What policies are you going to put in place over the next 12 months that may have the effect of improving these on the ground or leading conditions for us’,” Boyer asked.
Gaskin responded that there is no short-term solution to tackle fluctuating global commodity prices but there has to be a continuum of systematic measures to ensure that the country has other means of garnering revenue. “I think it will be a great mistake for us to continue to accept or continue not to invest in value-added industries or to continue not to invest in the services sector and hope that we can somehow survive another 50 years depending on the export of a handful of primary products,” he said.
“Global commodity prices are down and that is the genesis of our downturn. It’s as simple as that. We do not have a well-diversified economy…we rely on five exports for export earnings and prices for most of these exports are low at this point and therefore it is going to piggyback on our economy…There is nothing we can do to influence global market prices. What we can do is improve the business environment in Guyana and find ways to encourage investment in other areas, value-added areas so that we don’t have to depend on global commodity prices,” Gaskin asserted.
