SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Guyanese Gov­ern­ment has called on Trinidad and To­ba­go in­vestors to cap­i­tal­ize on in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in that coun­try’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

This an­nounce­ment was made by Zul­fikar Mustapha, Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, as he ad­dressed the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, on Tues­day 23 March 2022.

Min­is­ter Mustapha said the re­gion can cap­i­tal­ize on the 30 per­cent pre­dict­ed short­fall of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion caused by the Russ­ian-Ukraine war, not­ing that re­gion­al coun­tries are ex­press­ing a de­sire to re­duce their an­nu­al food im­port bills.

“What is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine and Rus­sia will re­duce pro­duc­tion fur­ther, for ex­am­ple wheat pro­duc­tion would be re­duced by 30 per­cent this year. The FAO (Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the UN) has con­clud­ed that food pro­duc­tion will fall short by al­most 30 per­cent this year. If the world will fall short by 30 per­cent in food pro­duc­tion this year, then there are a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties that you can in­vest in, not on­ly in T&T, but Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean.” 

Min­is­ter Mustapha not­ed that the re­gion can be­come self-suf­fi­cient in poul­try pro­duc­tion but has to im­port prod­ucts from out­side of the re­gion. He said as a re­sult, Guyana plans to plant two crops of corn and soya an­nu­al­ly on 25,000 acres by 2025, which he said would make Guyana self-suf­fi­cient in feed pro­duc­tion. He in­vit­ed in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies to in­vest in rice, sug­ar and down­stream agro pro­cess­ing.

“Not on­ly does Guyana want to be a pri­ma­ry agri­cul­ture pro­duc­er, we al­so want to cre­ate val­ue added prod­ucts for do­mes­tic, re­gion­al and Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets,” Guyana’s agri­cul­ture min­is­ter said. 

“In ad­di­tion, Guyana is de­vel­op­ing the in­fra­struc­ture for trans­porta­tion that would link Guyana with Brazil, Suri­name and French Guiana where he said the mar­ket far ex­ceeds the Caribbean re­gion,” he said.

Min­is­ter Mustapha said Guyana al­so is work­ing on mas­sive drainage in­fra­struc­ture that would mit­i­gate flood­ing. He said last year’s heavy rain­fall caused ex­ten­sive dam­age to agri­cul­ture and the Guyanese gov­ern­ment had to pump over $7 bil­lion to re­vi­tal­ize the sec­tor. 

“Ad­di­tion­al bur­dens placed on the back of in­vestors and farm­ers were re­duced,” he ex­plained.  “Land rental charges were slashed by $11,500 an acre. There is no VAT and im­port du­ty on agri­cul­tur­al ma­chin­ery and equip­ment.”

“Sev­er­al agri­cul­ture fees were re­vert­ed to pre-2015 rates,” he added.

Min­is­ter Mustapha al­so in­vit­ed in­vestors to par­take in a busi­ness in­vest­ment fo­rum card­ed for 19th-21st May in Guyana.

Mean­while, Robert Per­saud, Guyana’s For­eign Sec­re­tary, said Guyana would be as­sist­ing re­gion­al coun­tries.

“We see Guyana’s growth as good for the en­tire re­gion,” he said.  “Guyana is strong­ly com­mit­ted that its pros­per­i­ty is shared through­out the re­gion.”

He said Guyana’s Gov­ern­ment al­so would be keep­ing its oblig­a­tion to pur­sue the in­ter­est of its peo­ple to build an in­clu­sive, sus­tain­able so­ci­ety.

Speak­ing about oil and gas sec­tor in­vest­ment, Min­is­ter Per­saud said Guyana’s Lo­cal Con­tent Act al­lows for around 150 ar­eas where for­eign in­vestors can par­tic­i­pate in that coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor. 

He not­ed that Guyana al­so would be in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in its non-en­er­gy sec­tor to en­sure that the coun­try has sus­tained eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. He ob­served that his coun­try had suf­fered from bad po­lit­i­cal man­age­ment for more than two decades and is now able to re­bound. 

Cou­va Cham­ber pres­i­dent, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, urged the Guyanese del­e­ga­tion to en­sure that wind­falls from its pe­tro­le­um sec­tor are in­vest­ed in eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.