President Irfaan Ali yesterday announced measures the government will take to handle the COVID-19 outbreak in the country and get the economy back on track and US$60 million more is being sourced to assist in these efforts.
This announcement was made during a special address by the president where he spoke on the government’s COVID-19 response agenda and plans. President Ali during the broadcast stated that the impact on Guyana’s economy following a total shutdown continues to be severe.
The president stated that businesses across all sectors were adversely affected by the COVID-19 shutdown, according to reports conducted by the Small Business Bureau and the Private Sector Commission. He disclosed that over the last few weeks he has been in consultation with a number of key stakeholders in the business sector to come up with a national plan to tackle the pandemic.
“What we have seen is a closure of small business enterprises, our economy declined by more than 4% at mid-year, contraction in business between 20% to 70%. The loss of jobs in some cases, reduced workforce significantly, reduced operations and output due to the implementation of rotation work schedules, and importantly, the loss of income has led to starvation in many communities,” the president said.
The head of state acknowledged that his government is aware of the difficulties that those communities are facing and with the new “holistic plan”, the government is not only focussing on the health aspect but is also looking at measures that will recreate jobs and ensure that income is restored. “We are targeting measures that will recreate jobs, ensure income goes back to the people, improve spending in the economy, while at the same time securing our population with the implementation of good health scenarios,” President Ali noted.
He remarked that the last five months were spent on matters other than implementing a comprehensive and proactive response to COVID-19. However, he assured that his government is focussed on implementing a plan which will hold the health and safety of the population paramount, while balancing the need to fortify Guyana’s economic standing. “I assure you that your concerns will be dealt with,” he said adding, “It is not only a public health issue but an economic, financial and social issue.”
Further President Ali revealed that the objective of his government’s response to the virus will ensure that all aspects of the pandemic are addressed. That, he informed, will be done by delivering relief to Guyana’s health system while increasing testing for the virus throughout the country along with the delivery of stimulus incentives and other arrangements to encourage the stability of businesses. The response also includes the delivery of relief measures to persons affected at the home level and delivering education to children in a non-conventional manner.
To this end Ali stated that notwithstanding the present state of Guyana’s economy and the unavailability of resources, the government had announced a $4.5 billion dollar allocation to assist in the country’s response to the pandemic. “We are in the process of mobilising approximately 60 million US dollars from the World Bank, OFID [OPEC Fund for International Development], IDB [Inter-American Development Bank] and Islamic Development Bank. This is in addition to the 2 million US grant received from the government of India. These are outside other bilateral support we have received and are in the process of receiving” the head of state disclosed.
Health Sector’s Response
In relation to the health aspect of the government’s response, Ali said that Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony has advised that a number of interventions be made to improve testing capability and turnaround time for results in the country along with the human resource capacity, infrastructure and equipment. He noted that the government has been able to improve the situation from where there were only 10,000 N95 face masks in the system two weeks ago, to currently having an additional 55,000 N95 masks available with another 25,000 on order. “Testing has moved from a position of 40 to 60 per day, to 96 to 140 per day. Notwithstanding this significant improvement, there is a backlog of 700 test results. This is as a result of the manual PCR machines currently used and also the lack of medical technologists,” Ali pointed out. He added that while two weeks ago there was only one medical technologist working, by the end of this week, there will be 30 new medical technologists from both the public and private sector who will be trained in Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing.
Additionally the president mentioned that two automatic PCR machines are expected to be sourced which will decrease the testing turnaround time from approximately nine hours to two hours. He emphasised it will clear the backlog of test results while also significantly improving Guyana’s capacity to conduct mass testing which he said will become necessary for the opening up of the country and economy.
While there are only four ventilators currently at the country’s largest public hospital, the president noted that within the coming week, 29 more ventilators are expected to be in the country which he said will be utilised in all regions in the country. He stated that additional healthcare workers have been deployed to a number of hotspot areas where the virus is quickly spreading, namely in Regions Seven and Nine.
“The ministry will convert the inoperable Infectious Disease Centre to an isolation facility,” President Ali said, while adding that arrangements are currently underway to have a facility which will be able to house 150 persons who require isolation.
Education Sector’s Response
While speaking about the impact on the country’s education system since the outbreak in March, the president expressed his concern that students have not been engaged academically in traditional ways since March of this year. He indicated that his government is particularly concerned about the unavailability of resources and infrastructure for school-aged children especially in the hinterland regions, those with disabilities, and others who are not able to access internet.
On that note the president said that he has directed the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, to develop a plan which will address the delivery of education to children in the current environment.
“After consultations with various stakeholders, it was decided that schools were not in a position from a public health, infrastructure and facilities standpoint to facilitate a reopening in September”, he reported. As a result he noted that the education minister’s plan will ensure that children and teachers remain engaged in learning.
Some $500 million will be made available to equip schools and provide services and facilities for students and teachers while the main goal is to have schools in the country in a state of readiness as soon as possible.
The education ministry has also been tasked with putting infrastructure in place for the delivery of the curriculum through the Learning Channel, state radio broadcasting, and even privately owned media operations.
Banking Sector’s Response
Ali also stated that he has advised the Bank of Guyana to examine a number of measures in an attempt to safeguard and strengthen the resilience of the sector. He announced that governor of the bank, following consultation with the Guyana Bankers Association, has decided that the Bank of Guyana will extend the moratorium on payments to the end of December 2020. This agreement he said will allow banks to defer customer payments to the end of the year.
“The Bank of Guyana will relax Section 14 and 15 of the Supervision Guidelines, Number 5, to December 2020. Additionally a waiver is being given to Section 13 of Supervision Guideline Number 5. The relaxation of stringent statutory measures is intended to result in direct benefits to customers of banks by giving the financial institutions the ability to operate with more flexibility,” the president revealed during his address. Further the Bank of Guyana, he said, will reduce liquidity requirements in two areas, being the lowering of the reserve requirement from 12% to 10% and the lowering of the liquid asset requirements for demand and deposit from 25% to 20%, and saving and time deposit also from 15% to 10%. To this end Ali noted that the reduction in the reserve requirement will result in the “injection” of some $9.4 billion and the reduction in the liquid asset requirements will release approximately $23.3 billion into the economy.
Additionally through the consultation between the Bank of Guyana and the Guyana Bankers Association, an agreement was made to have commercial banks offer a general concessional reduction of interest rates of one and two per cent on customer loans below $10 million until December 30th, 2020. However, some commercial banks agreed to apply special treatment to the interest accumulated during the moratorium period including no capitalization, term extension, and the foregoing of interest in special circumstances to loans with an outstanding balance of $10 million and below. The agreement made will see bank charges being waived including ATM charges and local merchant charges which will encourage more “out of bank” transactions as well as charges for transactions by senior citizens. “These measures will not affect the soundness of our banking system and financial architecture” President Ali assured.
President Irfaan Ali explained that all the measures that have been outlined for the various sectors are not intended to be the answer to all potential consequences of the global pandemic and as such the government will work to ensure that all objectives of the plan are eventually implemented.
