Dear Editor,
Guyana’s economy will remain resilient against the effects of COVID-19, maintaining its growth trajectory as the petroleum sector ‘picks up steam’ with another oil discovery in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana.
This discovery will certainly continue to develop Guyana’s offshore resources and unlock additional value for the people of Guyana and all stakeholders. This will definitely create more job opportunities in addition to more than 2,300 Guyanese now providing on and offshore support for the Stabroek partners’ project activities – up more than 20% since late 2019.
Guyana grew at an extraordinary rate of 43.5% in 2020, having completed a year of oil production. The positive spillover effects have been dampened by a deep contraction in the non-oil economy, triggered by COVID-19 mitigation measures.
Despite the lingering adversities, projections remain positive, with the country set to record economic growth of 20.9% at the end of 2021, 26.0% in 2022 and 23.0% in 2023. (GC)
under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government, something the APNU/AFC Opposition fail to realise.
APNU/AFC need to stop playing dirty politics and looking for attention. The Opposition need instead to focus and embrace our Government’s economic policies, and help to develop our society so the next generation can have a greater foundation on which to develop their lives to become positive and fruitful members of society.
The APNU/AFC leaders have a definite coterie of what can only be described as enemies of national progress. One is left to wonder what criteria was used by the political managers of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) as determinants for selecting their respective parties’ Members of Parliament.
This particular question is inevitable, because of what can only be seen as a bizarre and macabre culture of the APNU/AFC Opposition behaviour, which has to be without parallel in the annals of political behaviour among parliamentarians and APNU/AFC leaders anywhere else.
As a Guyanese, I am puzzled and cannot understand why a group of political leaders elected to their country’s foremost policy-making assembly, professing to love their country and to sacrifice themselves for its welfare and development, utilise such an honoured position to continuously stab the nation’s progress in the back? Of course, this murderous action has been their practical doing since our Government has been sworn into office on August 02, 2020.
The APNU-AFC leaders would want their many constituents’ supporters to believe that their actions have been carried out to safeguard the nation’s best interests. It is mind-boggling to listen to the many frantic attempts by these clearly defined enemies of progress as they desperately try to give credence to actions that are not only anti-national, but injurious to the national well-being of citizens.
The APNU/AFC Opposition have made a poor attempt to discredit the PPP/C Government’s efforts geared towards the development of all the regions, including Region #10. Several publications were made by the APNU/AFC Coalition stating that the PPP/C are “discriminating against” and “stifling” Linden and Region 10, which are all lies that are only intended to create division and undermine the Government’s commitment to the development of Guyana.
The tactics that are being used by the APNU/AFC Opposition leaders is to create opportunity for personal ambition, selfishness, and hitherto ulterior motives such as the settling of scores and vindictiveness.
If one should look back at the development done in the past and now undertaken by the PPP/C, it is clear that the PPP/C Government is focused on the well-being of all Guyanese, unlike the APNU/AFC, who neglected countless Guyanese and regions across this country. However, the PPP/C Government has continued to enact policies that strengthen the opportunity for the furtherance of the national goals of socio-economic development for the good of all, which must be a genuine and consistent desire on the part of those representatives without any conditionality. More so, it is an opportunity to serve.
Any opposition party should be proud to be associated with its country’s progressive development, particularly a country whose Government has been implementing policies that continue to effect qualitative improvements in the lives of citizens.
Look at the thousands who, in a few months, are going to be proud homeowners. This is unprecedented in the history of the nation! The thousands of all classes who are now motor vehicle owners are, again, without precedent!
Take the massive infrastructural projects our Government and Minister of Public Works have embarked on over the last few months. We are able to see the Ministry of Agriculture’s new visionary approach, wherein agriculture has become the vehicle for sustainable economic and social prosperity in Guyana by strengthening the focus on infrastructure development for the agricultural sector; creating a new focus on farming systems and techniques, biotechnology and precision agriculture. This has been expanding and making agro-diversity policy and programmes sustainable.
The many offerings during COVID-19 to better the quality of health care to citizens more than at any other time in this nation’s history, with the many social programmes of empowerment that have begun to positively impact the lives of women, youths and vulnerable groups, have established initiatives that can be further elevated to astronomical levels with the realisation of the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, gas-to-shore project, a historical intervention that will make life four-fold more beneficial to all Guyanese.
Renewable energy to work in rural areas.
Our Government, since assuming office, has designed framework to allow regional policy that offer a real opportunity to reconcile policy trade-offs and identify potential complementarities among the three objectives of energy security, climate change mitigation, and job creation.
Underlining the need for a shift in the approach to rural development by using renewable energy for sustainable development in rural areas focuses on the competitiveness of rural areas that include embed energy strategies in the local economic development strategy so that it reflects local potentials and needs that are main impetus for promoting renewable energy, and the local economic benefits that were overlooked by the previous APNU/AFC Government.
This groundbreaking project is about lifting Guyana and the Guyanese people to a higher plateau of national pride, since it is about the noble and humanitarian goal of alleviating poverty; and about Guyana laying a stronger foundation for its future generations.
Therefore, Guyanese request both the APNU and the AFC Opposition members and leaders to use their extra time towards joining with the PPP/C Government in lifting our country to greatness, rather than undermine its progress.
Sincerely,
David Adams
