Aleem Khan

Guyanese Pres­i­dent Don­ald Ramo­tar sought to woo Caribbean in­vestors yes­ter­day when he ad­dressed the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain."This is a good time for Caribbean in­vestors to look south to Guyana," he said.Cit­ing im­proved eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors, Ramo­tar told busi­ness peo­ple this is "the best time" to in­vest in Guyana be­cause there are "still a lot of gaps to fill."

He said: "The ground­work for our re­cov­ery was laid in 1992 with the re­turn of democ­ra­cy to Guyana. I strong­ly feel that there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty for us to have sus­tained so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment with­out hav­ing po­lit­i­cal democ­ra­cy of which free and fair elec­tions would be at the heart."

In the same breath, how­ev­er, the pres­i­dent knocked the Caribbean for not be­ing more vo­cal against what was hap­pen­ing in Guyana pri­or to 1992. Pri­or to 1992, Guyana had nev­er had "free and fair" elec­tions as vi­o­lent ri­ots would of­ten break out dur­ing elec­tions.

He said Guyana is an ex­am­ple of "what should not be done in the fu­ture when democ­ra­cy is threat­ened in any part of our ter­ri­to­ries be­cause I be­lieve that, had not the re­gion been so qui­et about Guyana in the dif­fi­cult days, we could have prob­a­bly turned the eco­nom­ic cor­ner well be­fore the time that we had done."That notwith­stand­ing, he said: "We have man­aged to re­store our econ­o­my in a sig­nif­i­cant way."

Ramo­tar said Guyana is "an at­trac­tive place for in­vest­ment" be­cause it has en­joyed over the last 15 years "a sta­ble macro­eco­nom­ic con­di­tion" which is a pre­req­ui­site for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

"In­fla­tion was 3.5 per cent in 2012 and was con­tained to sin­gle dig­its over the last 15 years, with the ex­cep­tion of 2007 when the prices of fu­el and food rose dra­mat­i­cal­ly," he said, adding that the ex­change rate has al­so been sta­ble since 2009. He said Guyana's gross in­ter­na­tion­al re­serves at the end of 2012 amount­ed to US$862.2 mil­lion, com­pared to US$123 mil­lion in 1991.

He said: "Our ex­port earn­ings have grown. Last year it was US$1.4 bil­lion com­pared to US$229 mil­lion in 1991. Our for­eign ex­change trans­ac­tions amount­ed to US$6.8 bil­lion last year com­pared to US$6 bil­lion in 2011, US$5.1 bil­lion in 2010, US$4.7 bil­lion in 2009 and US$4.8 bil­lion in 2008."So I think that we have a very sta­ble macro­eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, and I know that in­vestors want to have pre­dictabil­i­ty, and this of­fers the kind of pre­dictabil­i­ty that we have in our coun­try."