April 25 2020
The Ministry of the Presidency (MoTP) today said it has noted reports published in yesterday’s daily newspapers which suggest that foreign partners as well as international financial institutions are unwilling to provide Guyana with financial aid to combat the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) because the country’s electoral process is incomplete.
That suggestion it said is inaccurate.
“Guyana remains engaged with several of its partners. It was only on Thursday, April 23, 2020 that the United States of America (USA) announced that financial aid to the tune of US$475,000 will be provided to help address Guyana’s priority areas in its fight against COVID-19.
“The Ministry wishes to make it clear that no international or financial institution has linked support to the Guyana’s national COVID-19 campaign to the outcome of the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
“No international financial institution has indicated that financial aid has been made conditional upon the completion of the electoral process”, MoTP said.
MoTP did not cite a specific report but on Thursday at a virtual press conference, the Chair of the National COVID-19 Task Force, de facto Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo himself hinted that it was possible that the current political stalemate was impacting the country’s ability to mobilize funding to fight the pandemic. Yesterday, Director General of the MoTP Joseph Harmon was named CEO of the Task Force in what would be seen as a downgrading of Nagamootoo’s role.
As reported by Stabroek News yesterday, the PM indicated that the political situation is possibly impacting Guyana’s ability to access international funding to respond to the pandemic.
Finance Minister Winston Jordan had announced in March that this country had sought a US$5 million loan from the World Bank, to implement measures for tackling the virus, which has had a devastating global impact and continues to spread. The country has so far received no response although several Caribbean countries – Dominica and St Vincent – have already been allocated sums.
“I believe that because of the political situation in Guyana while we are in transition to a Government that will emerge after March 2nd 2020 elections that we cannot for sure say whether some of these international multilateral lending agencies are going to be dealing with Guyana’s applications any time soon, they probably would want to sit it out and wait until the President is sworn in,” he told the press conference.
He said that Government in the absence of a budget and additional international funding is “reconfiguring” projects to be COVID-19 related.
“We have an ongoing relationship with the [Inter- American Development Bank] for a number of projects which will be reconfigured to be COVID-19 related projects. I am told that this will be just under $80M” he explained, adding that government is also hoping to ‘for short term use” tap into funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Other assistance has been received from the United States Government and the Indian Government which has offered “the low hanging fruit” of US$1 million for COVID-19 related assistance.
China, he added, will be providing necessary equipment.
While MoTP today cited the American assistance of $100m, observers say that it will be considered to be humanitarian aid and separate from any punitive measures that might be implemented over rigged elections. A day after the announcement of the aid, a senior US official, Michael Kozak expressed concern again over the delayed elections results.
Interestingly, the European Union yesterday donated to COVID-19 efforts but did so via a service organisation and not the government.