Economic diversification is crucial, following Guyana President Dr Irfaan Ali statement regarding adaptation to the changing global environment.

FILE – President of Guyana, Dr Irfaan Ali, during discussions with landscapers on the Guyana Government’s Beautification Initiative, on February 4, 2025.

The Guyana gov­ern­ment says the coun­try’s am­bi­tious eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy is es­sen­tial to deal­ing with a chang­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion due to pol­i­cy changes in the Unit­ed States and its in­flu­ence on ma­jor economies.

Speak­ing dur­ing the lat­est episode of the “En­er­gy Per­spec­tive Pod­cast”, Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said while Guyana is among the fastest grow­ing economies, it is still in­ter­re­lat­ed with re­gion­al and glob­al mar­kets that are fac­ing nu­mer­ous chal­lenges.

He said Guyana’s econ­o­my can be im­pact­ed with the US push­ing to ex­pand oil and gas ex­plo­ration and that George­town must proac­tive­ly plan for such fac­tors, en­sur­ing long-term sta­bil­i­ty be­yond oil and gas.

“That is what we have been com­mu­ni­cat­ing to the Guyanese peo­ple from day one. That is, we have to be re­spon­si­ble in the way we man­age the re­sources from oil and gas. And that is why it is so crit­i­cal for us to pur­sue eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and build out oth­er seg­ments and sec­tors of our econ­o­my,” he said.

He said the gov­ern­ment has been in­ject­ing oil rev­enues to ex­pand in­fra­struc­ture, health, ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing and oth­er so­cial ser­vices, and im­por­tant­ly, to po­si­tion Guyana as a ma­jor hub for food pro­duc­tion.

Pres­i­dent Ali high­light­ed con­cerns over ris­ing food prices, which could re­sult from labour short­ages in the Unit­ed States due to im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies and se­vere weath­er pat­terns.

In re­sponse to this pre­dict­ed is­sue, Pres­i­dent Ali said the gov­ern­ment has made heavy in­vest­ments in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing and mod­ern farm­ing tech­nolo­gies such as hy­dro­pon­ics.

“And all of this is not on­ly to cre­ate lo­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties, but it is to re­spond to glob­al chal­lenges. So, when we are build­ing the econ­o­my here, it is not built in iso­la­tion of the re­al­i­ties glob­al­ly,” he said.

Pres­i­dent Ali not­ed that the 2025 na­tion­al bud­get, which was ap­proved last week by the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, di­rect­ly mit­i­gates these chal­lenges, as the gov­ern­ment has main­tained pre-COVID freight rates for im­port du­ties.

Pres­i­dent Ali said that these mea­sures will ef­fec­tive­ly re­move the eco­nom­ic bur­den from con­sumers, adding that the gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed pro­vi­sions to ad­dress bot­tle-neck chal­lenges in the De­mer­ara Riv­er, al­low­ing large ships to com­mute on Guyana’s shores.

“We are work­ing now with the pri­vate sec­tor to have a mod­el that would have a long-term so­lu­tion to this is­sue of dredg­ing and the is­sue of hav­ing a draft that is con­sis­tent­ly at low tide and high tide,” he ex­plained, “so that large ships can come in.”

Pres­i­dent Ali al­so re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion for eco­nom­ic growth, high­light­ing the in­vest­ment in con­struct­ing the Lin­den to Mabu­ra Hill road­way that will con­nect Guyana with North­ern Brazil.

He said this sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment will cre­ate ad­di­tion­al av­enues for col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­hance trade op­por­tu­ni­ties, there­by in­te­grat­ing Guyana’s econ­o­my with re­gion­al sup­ply chains.

Ali said with en­er­gy prices set to sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­crease, due to the gas-to-en­er­gy project at Wales in Re­gion Three, it is time to ar­tic­u­late a plan on the type of trans­port and lo­gis­tics de­vel­op­ment need­ed.

“We have to look at not on­ly the large in­dus­tries, but look at all the mi­cro and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es that can be de­vel­oped out of this great po­ten­tial,” Pres­i­dent Ali said, not­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go utilised rev­enues from its oil for cheap en­er­gy costs o de­vel­oped a strong man­u­fac­tur­ing and agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tors.

He said by en­hanc­ing food pro­duc­tion and the man­u­fac­tur­ing and agro-pro­cess­ing in­dus­try, the gov­ern­ment aims to cre­ate wealth, jobs, and re­silience against eco­nom­ic shocks. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC).