Guyana's per capita income of US$800+ has upgraded its classification to a middle-income country, but this places it in a group where aid is more quickly cut in times of diversion of resources. President Bharrat Jagdeo feels Guyana's position should be reclassified.

At a media briefing at the Office of the President yesterday, Jagdeo said he has argued with the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) that Guyana should be in the low-income group because of the need to access more soft loans and concessionary resources. To be classified as low income a country's per capita has to be less than US$750.

In his meeting with the newly-appointed Secretary of State for Development, Hilary Benn, prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nigeria recently, Jagdeo said, he argued for additional support; not only in financial terms but for policies. Guyana, he said, does not want handouts but arrangements that would help it to compete meaningfully in the global economy.

Jagdeo said he urged DfID support to Guyana in terms of the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. Guyana is hoping to arrive at HIPC completion point next week when it goes to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Jagdeo said he hoped the government would get the full support of the political opposition on this matter, "because it will benefit our people." He said that given the origin of the debt problem in Guyana the PNCR has a moral responsibility to support the government in removing the burden from "the backs of our people."

Jagdeo said that in 1990 the Caribbean Council of Churches (CCC) rated Guyana as the poorest country in the Caribbean, just below Haiti. Then, the country's per capita income was just below US$300.

He added that the country has made tremendous strides in the past decade, but "you could be penalised for being successful, too."

With the increasing diversion of financing to Iraq and the loss of preferences, he said, CARICOM countries run the risk of being further marginalized.

Another of the major concerns raised with DFID was in relation to the reform of the Common Agricultural Policies (CAP) in Europe and the position taken by the European Union to cut the intervention price by half and to subsidise farmers through another mechanism almost at a level equivalent to the last subsidies. Jagdeo said that the new price Europe would be paying for rice in some cases was below Guyana's cost of production.

Most of the European countries, Jagdeo said, could not say that they were committed to the Millennium Development Goal to reduce poverty by half by the year 2015, when they were practicing policies that would lead to impoverishment. He said it did not appear that the situation regarding rice was reversible as the United Kingdom was alone in the European Union in its support for Guyana's position.

The Caribbean has asked that the tariff barrier for the region's rice exports to the EU be removed and for the region to receive substantial transitional help, because the EU's current actions would create additional hardships for the region's rice industry.

However, the region was very strong on sugar. Jamaica's Prime Minister, PJ Patterson, who was among the negotiators of the Sugar Protocol in the 70s had explained that the price for sugar was higher than what now obtains in the EU, because there were shortages at the time.