During a special interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA) on Friday, the President said that based on the context of the economic decline in the international community and the low or negative growth rate, his Government’s ability to create a $72.9 billion Budget is a great achievement.

Guyana, unlike many Caribbean and other countries, had a 1.9 percent growth rate for last year and in 2001, it was one of only two Caribbean countries, other than Jamaica to have a positive growth rate.

“I thought that given the international context and the crimes encountered along with low prices for our export commodities, that our efforts to create the budget, paid off well,” he said.

The thrust of this year’s budget, the largest ever in the history of Guyana, is to improve the social services, education, health services, and positive growth, attract investments and create job opportunities, among other things, that would benefit Guyanese.

According to the Guyanese Head of State, some countries in the Caribbean Region, among others, have had a bad economy over recent years because of the global economic recession and now the ongoing war in Iraq. As a result, many of them have had to restructure their work programmes.

While Guyana’s public servants were crying out for late salaries and salary increases, some countries could not afford to pay public servants. Some had to curtail their social service expenditures, in order to have some viability in their budget, he disclosed.

Meanwhile, the President said that it was relatively easy, securing the loans to fund this year’s Budget.

According to him, once the country has a direction of how much expenditure it wants to meet and ascertain how and from where the loans are to be obtained, it is quite an easy task.

He said this year’s Budget is quite significant, since it takes care of the needs of the people, while at the same time not incurring significant debts, unlike what happened, prior to 1992 when the PPP Government inherited tremendous debt burdens. Today, these debts have now been cut to half, he said.

“We’re not financing current expenditures at the expense of the future generation,” the Guyanese Head of State noted.

President Jagdeo has attributed the ‘easy’ securing of loans to the “good working relationships” his Government has established with “several multilateral agencies” which, according to the President, are pleased with the Government’s management of the local economy.

He said, however, that this required him going abroad and trying to change the ill and false perception that the country was riddled with ugly scenes of crimes and political instability.

He pointed out that “at no time in the history of Guyana has so much of our expenditures been funded from revenues.”

“We kept a rigid control on our monetary and fiscal disciplines … and we met our targets,” he added.