President to seek foreign help for local tourism
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo has announced that he intends to aggressively court foreign expertise in the interest of giving the tourism industry the kind of impetus it needs. Speaking as guest of honour at a tourism-related social function in Georgetown Club Monday night, he said:"Let me make it quite clear; I do not have any apologies about it. "We want our local guys to succeed and there are some very good companies and people in the tourism sector and they are doing a wonderful job for this country. But I am going to go aggressively out to get foreign interest into this country in the sector." The Head of State said he would seek overseas aid because the fledgling tourism sector is in dire need of capital, expertise and general knowhow, all of which, "in many cases...do not reside within the local Private Sector". He also pointed to the need for a change in attitude, not only within the Public Sector but in the country generally, from seeing gold, diamonds, forest products, rice and sugar as the only exports of importance. President Jagdeo said the Private Sector has a tendency "to exclude foreign entrants...[to] discourage people from coming here for fear of competition" in spite of all the talk about being open-minded and bringing in investments to make tourism the leading sector. In general, but more particularly within the Private Sector, the practice is to depend upon the Government to do everything, the President said. However, he added:"My task as the President of Guyana is to shift Government into the background." President Jagdeo said, for too long, this country "has suffered from too much government" and it sometimes bothers him that it is the same people who say they want to develop the Private Sector who want to rely so heavily upon the Government. He advised:"Forget Government, go about doing your business. And if there is something that the Government is doing that is affecting your business, then be critical; criticise the Government. That's the kind of openess that we want to encourage in this country." The President cautioned, though, that criticism "must be for reasons of moving the sector forward and not private, individual interest." Meanwhile, Mr Jagdeo promised that Government will take seriously, at the level of Cabinet no less, the recommendations which came out of the just concluded Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) Fourth Annual Conference on Sustainable Development, in honour of which the reception was held. "I want to say to you that the recommendations that emerged from this conference, that you had here in Guyana, would be taken into consideration at the very highest level," he pledged to the invitees both local and foreign. President Jagdeo said he would get Trade, Tourism and Industry Minister, Mr Geoffrey Da Silva, to take the proposals to Cabinet and, together, they would all see how those could be utilised to improve tourism in Guyana, policy-wise and incentive-wise. The Guyanese Leader said it is pointless for him to harp about the beauty of this country and the hospitality of its peoples, because the delegates from abroad would have experienced it for themselves during the many study tours organised as part of the conference. Nevertheless, he challenged writers for travel journals and other similarly oriented personnel to think favourably about Guyana and "to not judge it by the exceptionally high standards to which they are accustomed." "I want you to view Guyana as a country in transition; a country that had a difficult task and a country that is looking to the future, without looking back. "I want you, especially the travel writers who are here today, to assess the things that you have seen in Guyana (our institutions...roads...buildings...scenic sights) and judge them not by standards you are accustomed to in some other parts of the world...but as a country that is evolving, in policies, institutions and a culture that is more open to the rest of the world," the President appealed. Conceding that enough was not being done to either rid the nation of the negative image it inherited from the economic morass of the late 1970s/early 1980s, or to market it effectively, he said it would be of tremendous help to assist in correcting "these shortcomings". "Tell people about what is going on here; tell them about the wonderful things that we have to offer and that would help us tremendously," the President urged.
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