It is not commonplace for routine visits to Guyana by trade delegations from sister CARICOM countries to be led by the Prime Minister of the visiting country. The recent visit here by a 25-member trade delegation (the numbers here are also significant) from Grenada led by that country’s Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, sends an unmistakable message regarding the Spice Isle’s recognition of the links between Guyana, and the rest of the region, in the context of the former’s role in what is now evidently a petro-driven economy in supporting the growth ambitions of CARICOM countries, not least Grenada.
It will be recalled that long before the dust had settled on Hurricane Beryl’s devastation on the region, President Irfaan Ali found himself in Grenada not just to attend the Conference of CARICOM but also to measure the effects of Beryl’s ‘wrecking ball’ on Grenada and overlook the varying consignments of material aid and physical support to help keep Grenada going while the post-Beryl ‘mopping up’ ensued.
Indeed, it is fair to say that the extent of the concern for the post-Beryl future of Grenada that arose from the discourses that would have taken place between President Ali and Prime Minister Mitchell would have influenced not just the size of the visiting Grenadian delegation, but, as well, the fact that Prime Minister Mitchell himself would have left his nation almost certainly still in the throes of considerable physical disruption to lead an official delegation with the intention of placing his own imprimatur on what, surely, has become an enhanced post-Beryl relationship between Guyana and Grenada.
Contextually, there having occurred a stepped-up post-Beryl relationship between Guyana and Grenada in the agriculture sector to support the country’s response to Beryl’s rampage, that initial step will be buttressed by further bilateral projects intended to build back Grenada’s agriculture sector. This newspaper is yet to see all of the details of the Final Communique which, presumably, would have emerged from the recent visit here by the Grenadian delegation, more particularly from the outcomes of the discourses between the two CARICOM Heads.
Significantly, and almost certainly in the context in which the visit here by the Grenadian delegation took place, some of the ‘space’ which these ‘official visits’ customarily occupy was taken up with exchanges between the visiting delegation and the local private sector and the staging at the Marriott Hotel of what was ‘tagged’ a Pure Grenada Expo executed by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) in partnership with the local Private Sector Commission. Here, it has to be said that the staging of a Pure Grenada Expo to coincide with a visit here by that country’s Prime Minister sends an unmistakable signal, one hopes, of a mutual intention on the part of the two countries to immerse themselves in a mutually beneficial trading regime.
While one expects that the intra-regional strengthening of post-Beryl relations between and among Caribbean countries on various fronts, going forward, the visit here by the Grenadian Prime Minister and a sizeable delegation does two things. First, it sends an unmistakable signal of appreciation to President Irfaan Ali and the Government of Guyana for the gestures made by Georgetown to help soothe some of the worst effects of Hurricane Beryl. More than that, it may well have the portents for the strengthening of relations between the two countries within the framework of what we strive for: a more closely knitted Caribbean Community.
