Latest update December 4th, 2024 2:40 AM
Guyana will not be an ATM for anyone – Jagdeo
Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo
Kaieteur News – Vice President (VP) Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday said that Guyana will not be an ATM for the Caribbean or anyone as a result of its newfound oil wealth, but investment from Guyana’s sister states is still welcome.
The Vice President was responding to a question about whether he thinks Guyana may one day be the ATM and financial capital of the Caribbean.
“…It’s disparaging of the Caribbean people to think too that they would see us as an ATM,” Jagdeo said in his response while making it clear that he does not believe the Caribbean people are looking at Guyana this way.
“…I think they’re not. They just want to, and they should be able to, invest here and share some of the prosperity too. So that’s how I see it evolving in the future as we go forward,” the vice president said.
While Jagdeo is open to his government allowing Caribbean nations to cash-in on some of Guyana’s oil wealth he noted that the people of Guyana must benefit first.
“You know I think we have to ensure that our own people are prosperous first, here in Guyana, wherever they live -in the most remote parts of the country, every Guyanese- that’s the first order of business,” he said.
He added too that Guyana is presently not making enough from its oil revenue to splurge now.
“We have to manage this wealth and we can’t splurge now when we don’t have money as yet, but later it’s going to get better”, the VP reminded.
To further enforce his point Jagdeo gave an example of how much oil money funded the 2024 trillion dollar budget. “The GYD $1.1 trillion budget that we have, less than 30% is funded from all the oil money that we got for last year.”
Nevertheless, Jagdeo noted that Guyana still has a responsibility to lend a helping hand to its neighbours in the Region when needed because they too have assisted Guyana in the past especially during the 2005 flood.
“…And then we have to be generous to people in our region too and people who suffer calamities around the world,” Jagdeo said before lauding his previous government’s assistance to Haiti during its catastrophic 2010 earthquake when the country was not yet producing oil.
“We gave Haiti, in proportion to our GDP, more than any country in the world, and we didn’t have oil money at that time,” he said.
According to Jagdeo Guyana had made a donation of US$1M. (Darren Hinds)
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