Rising demand for foreign currency only temporary - Jagdeo

Rising demand for foreign currency only temporary – Jagdeo

Oct 06, 2025 News

(Kaieteur News) – Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo said the shortage of foreign currency in the country is a temporary situation and predicts that the demand will drop once the major government projects are completed.

Rising demand for foreign currency only temporary - Jagdeo

Vice president Bharrat Jagdeo

At his Thursday press conference, he told journalists that the investments the government has made will not go on forever, since they are not recurrent in nature. He said there will be a significant reduction in demand for major capital projects, and while there will be new ones, they will not significantly affect foreign currency.

“Now, let me make it clear. We’ve always maintained throughout the campaign and for the several years that we’ve been in government that our capacity to manage the financial sector, and capacity doesn’t mean just the technical capability, but the funds to inject in the market should we need to do so, is all available to us and there’s no shortage of funding,” he said.

The VP reminded reporters that the government has already injected $1.2 billion into the market so far for this year, and has the capacity to inject more funds if the need arises.

He said the government’s capacity will continue to grow in the years ahead given the large amounts of revenue that will flow into treasury from the Natural Resources Fund (NRF). Looking at the projections for the said revenue, it will run into billions of dollars in foreign currency, Jagdeo relayed.

“Now it’s very clear that the demand (foreign currency) has grown because our country is expanding at a rapid pace. We’re in a major period where we’re building out the infrastructure that would last us for decades into the future. And a lot of this infrastructure is financed from the local market through the local banking system and we are providing the foreign currency for that investment,” Jagdeo said.

He explained that although the government has a loan for the new Demerara Bridge, it is financing over US $100 million through the treasury.

“We have been financing most of the gas-to-energy projects so far. Hundreds of millions of US dollars we’ve been finding from the local market to finance that. A lot of the local companies in the past would go and take a loan from abroad and then finance an investment. In the current situation, many of them are taking local loans and they’re buying factories or equipment, and therefore we have to find the foreign currency for that. So, we have seen a major growth in the demand for foreign currency and this is for capital investment,” he added.

The Ministry of Finance said back in April that the government injected a further US$100 into the banking system to address foreign currency shortages.

According to the ministry, Jagdeo and Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, along with Central Bank Governor Dr. Gobind Ganga, met with the chief executive officers and other representatives of commercial banks to discuss recent developments in the banking system particularly the foreign exchange market.

At the meeting, note was taken of the continued availability of adequate levels of foreign currency in the financial system as a whole to meet ongoing demand, despite occasional timing differences.

According to the ministry, in order to ensure pending requests for foreign currency are met in a timely manner, US$100 million was immediately injected into the market distributed across all commercial banks. “This injection will provide immediate relief to the system in meeting pending demand for foreign currency, while the temporary timing mismatches unwind themselves,” the ministry stated.

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Bharrat Jagdeo, demand, foreign currency, major projects, New Demerara Bridge

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