Opposition Leader Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Wednesday evening warned stakeholders that the comments from Government’s camp about Guyana’s economy benefiting immediately post oil production is misleading.
“Even the oil companies, because they talk to me too, they don’t have such a rosy picture of the fortunes of Guyana changing drastically, dramatically in the time frame that we think it will happen, it will happen but not from 2020 to 2025, those will be rough years for us because US $300M dollars coming in per year is really nothing if you look at what we have lost already and what US $300M means” the Opposition Leader said addressing a gathering of mostly private sector representatives at the GCCI’s Annual Awards and Dinner Gala.
According to Jagdeo, while the impending oil and gas sector presents a massive transformational opportunity for Guyana, citizens must be realistic when it comes to expectations post first oil.
“The $300M, if we use some to save for intergenerational equity, some for macroeconomic purposes, some on infrastructure that’s gone, its gone. How does it change everything else, we ourselves have to wait or else we may be grossly disappointed and then we will start complaining again because we have been given an unrealistic picture because of what they are doing now, because of this entire approach that they are setting us up for long term to medium term problems” Jagdeo posited.
The Opposition Leader went on to say that this action by government is worrisome especially since the impression given by government does not reflect the country’s reality.
With principle explorer ExxonMobil pushing for the development of the oil reserves, production is scheduled to begin in early 2020 or perhaps late 2019.
In fact only last week, the US oil giant announced its 10th discovery, reinforcing the country’s potential to be able to produce more than 750,000 barrels of oil daily by 2025.
