Dear Editor,
In the past, a lot of negativities permeated the Internet about Guyana. There is now a lot of good news about Guyana’s economic boom which still needs to be translated into progress for Guyanese. There certainly is a lot more optimism.
My advice to the democratically elected PPP/C Government is to not to lose the opportunity to promote Guyana utilising the oil discoveries and also Guyana’s economic boom to garner investment into Guyana. Do not listen to naysayers who says Guyanese should own all the businesses in Guyana. Instead, open up Guyana to investment from abroad as well as bring in skilled workers to train Guya-nese to do higher quality work. These naysayers have an inwardly focused development model believing that they got the skills to develop Guyana.
If we had the skills to develop Guyana then the oil money is not needed to do so.
Clearly, the brain drain has taken its toll; Guyanese need retraining.
The democratically elected PPP/C Govern-ment may wish to re-examine the National Development Strategy which, in my view, is a waste of time as no costing was done to say how much each project would cost. It would be like me wanting to build a house without knowing the cost.
Re-examine it to pick out worthwhile projects factoring in project costs.
The alternative is to create National Development Strategy 2 which would include costs.
I do understand that there is a view about reducing energy costs to attract manufacturing companies which will create thousands of jobs. My view is that any reduction in energy costs would be offset by increasing labour costs. So, while energy would be cheaper, labour would be more expensive.
In the meantime, keep up the good work of promoting Guyana as an investment destination internationally.
As for the rising cost of living in Guyana: the reason people are feeling the pinch with rising cost of living is because many were dependent on friends and relatives abroad sending them barrels and remittance. They now finding that because cost of living has risen, the remittances is not enough. So, now many, some of who were not working and not looking for a job, will have to start working. The remittances isn’t enough especially when wages rise again leading to higher cost of living.
Sincerely,
Sean Ori
