President pleased with economic progress
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo has complimented Guyana for doing extremely well economically given the difficulties it is faced with. Speaking on the weekly radio/television programme `This Week with the President', Mr Jagdeo said there are countries significantly stronger than Guyana, but they are not doing as well when faced with the same problems. According to the Guyana Information Services (GIS), the President said despite the fact the country is having good economic management, it is quite strange that few people locally say so. "...But if you speak to all the multilateral institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and if you speak to the bilateral donors, the Americans, the Canadians, the Europeans, etc, you would see their reports and you will see that Guyana is doing extremely in the context of the difficulties facing countries like ours," the statement quoted President Jagdeo as saying. He urged that if people want an unbiased assessment of the country's economic performance they should refer to the reports because the financial institutions do not have a vested interest. The President explained that if there was not good economic management then the country would not have been able to secure significant debt relief. "If we have not been able to secure that relief given the legacy....we would have been spending still close to 100 per cent of our revenue to servicing debts. But because of the significant reduction of the debt relief, we are using less than half of our revenue to service debts. That allows us to do other things (like) building schools, roads, health units," GIS quoted the President as saying. He also noted that the latest move by the European Union (EU) granting a "significant debt write-off" to Guyana is very welcome, "but was expected given our good performance in the face of severe global and local pressures." The President assured too that while locally the political climate is not too good for investment and job creation, the Government is working to find solutions to these issues. "We will continue our battle to get additional debt relief. There is scope and Guyana is known in the international circles now as one of the strongest advocates for debt relief," Mr Jagdeo said. He added that from 1995 to now, nearly US$900M of the debts were written off, largely because of the Government's lobbying efforts overseas and the country's good performance.
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