Outgoing US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch says Washington does not fear losing influence to Beijing here and has amplified its own strategy to ensure that it remains Guyana’s and the Caribbean’s number one ally.
“China’s footprint is increasing in the Carib-bean. It’s increasing in Guyana that’s for sure”, the ambassador said.
In an exclusive interview with Stabroek News, Lynch said that the US understands that China will want to expand its presence here as the lucrative oil and gas sector was attractive but the US has its advantages.
“There are so many opportunities in the broader Caribbean, but I can speak more specifically to Guyana, with all of the opportunities here in the petroleum sector and oil gas. Also because of the petroleum sector, as in all of the other areas, including infrastructure, there are so many opportunities for all nations to look at potentially investing in Guyana, and we’re well aware the Chinese are interested,” she said.
Lynch added, “The United States is interested, other nations are very interested. What I’d like to do is educate US investors about these opportunities in a country that maybe they hadn’t considered before. But now with all that is in front of Guyana, we have at the US embassy, Georgetown, worked the phones, gone to conferences, held webinars… even during COVID. We would do that to educate potential US investors about what they might look at in Guyana. And we’ve been, by-and-large, very successful.” Lynch who took up duty here in 2019 said that compared to when she arrived, the number of US companies in Guyana has significantly increased and those investments helped to strengthen that country’s spread.
“When I first arrived here they were only a handful of US companies. Some of them very big ones that I didn’t have a hand in them coming here. But here we are, five years later and there are about a 100 US companies here in Guyana. Some are big but a lot of them are small medium-sized, even family-owned companies that are investing for the first time overseas” she said. As it relates to business, she said that US companies have a history of providing quality, reliability and integrity.
“What I always say is it’s a competitive environment out there. So what is the US bringing that’s different from other nations? The US companies bring quality, excellence, on time on budget projects and that’s very important to Guyana because the country is interested in taking advantage of the oil and gas revenues now, to improve the quality of life of its people now or as soon as possible,” she said.
On Thursday at a press conference, the Ambassador expanded on the issue of Beijing’s presence in the region and echoed the position that the US was here to stay and will continue to invest. “We’ve tripled the bilateral trade over the last few years so I think we are here we are strong, and we will remain here,” she said.
Mix of efforts
Asked by this newspaper about criticisms that the US$5.5 million the US gave to CARICOM in June towards the region’s food security plan was paltry compared to China’s financial capacity and propensity to offer more money, and if the US was exploring giving more, Lynch underscored that monetary investments were not all that the US offers since its investments are multi-pronged and thus geared to ensure holistic development. She listed the myriad programmes and areas where Washington provides support and made clear that they understand that the Caribbean region was crucial to their own development since it is also their “neighbourhood”.
Among those were the Summits of the Americas and US-CARICOM collaboration on energy security, food security and access to finance.
“We will continue to explore all opportunities to invest more; assist more. So you know, I would say our involvement in Guyana and the broader community is a mix of efforts. Some of them involve assistance. Some of them involves the private sector, and all of those things are important. What’s most important, I think, it is just conversations with the US; guidance; advice that we can offer…and we stand ready to continue and that is just one effort; one of many, many, many efforts that we have in the Caribbean right now.
“So with some nations, I don’t have all the bilateral assistance numbers at the ready, but there’s that regional assistance. We have USAID working in the region; we have USDA; Treasury …the breadth and depth of the US government working in the broader Caribbean, and many of those agencies and departments are here in Guyana. I would say myself that this is our neighbourhood too. And so we want to see the Carib-bean succeed. We want to see Guyana succeed, because these successes are also our successes,” she added.
With regard to the very agriculture sector that saw the donation, Lynch pointed to technical and other support that has been given, such as help with the pesticide management programme, as she noted that, “some of these things don’t always make the press but they are important”, Lynch stated.
She pointed to the steady stream of increased engagement by the Biden administration and the visits of two Secretaries of State as some of the testimonies to the commitments of her country.
“All of this… is meant to demonstrate the importance of the Caribbean and our desire to increase opportunities for private sector engagement as well as government to government engagement. And all of those meetings and conferences… have resulted in real change, real efforts,” Lynch said.
