Dear Editor,

On Sunday, I came across a supplemental advertisement in a New York newspaper featuring our neighbour to the east, Suriname, and after reading it, all I kept asking myself was: Why not Guyana? What’s wrong with Guyana? Why isn’t Guyana being featured in newspaper supplements across America’s metropolitan cities, but especially New York?

Here is a neighbouring country that attained independence nine years after Guyana, is much smaller in geographic size (165,000 sq km) and population (470,000), and seems endowed with lesser natural resources than Guyana, yet is doing economically better than Guyana. And get this, just like Guyana it also experienced its share of internal political instability that saw the emergence of a military-led government, headed by Desi Bouterse. But, according to the featured supplement, since the return of civilian rule in the beginning of the 1990s and the subsequent peace accord of 1992, it has been generally stable and even survived some natural disasters like the 2006 floods to emerge with promising signs of a vibrant and quick-recovering developing economy.

What is useful to note in this economic upturn is that in 2006, the National Assembly approved a government-sponsored 2006-2011 five-year plan that included several decisive economic policy initiatives that covered pubic sector reform and other sectoral development programmes with financial backing from the IDB and bilateral cooperation with the Government of the Netherlands.

In Guyana, even though President Bharrat Jagdeo presided over the government for seven years before being re-elected in 2006 on his party’s list system, his mouthpieces have been blabbing boastfully about debt relief and sectoral programmes, thanks to the WB and IMF, but he is still to produce a five-year plan, which should give a picture to the people so they can unite behind the government and also to investors to show that the government knows what it is about. Guyana also seems to be struggling with the help it has been getting from the British to get our country back on sound economic footing, even as the current Surinamese government has retained an excellent working relationship with it former colonial masters in the Netherlands.

Imagine the British are trying to help us reform our demonized, demoralized and drained security sector and instead of welcoming their input, even if it means the stationing of British personnel among our own, our government starts barking and braying about not wanting to compromise our national sovereignty. Sounds more like government is either worried about what British personnel might uncover or that the presence of such personnel might interfere with its partisan agenda to keep using crimes and criminals as an excuse to generate fear among the PPP support base come election time.

Meanwhile, many of the Jagdeo administration’s spinners would also have us believe that achieving macroeconomic stability is such a great thing to boast about when, in actuality, Guyana has the potential to do better than simply achieving macroeconomic stability; it has the potential to better Suriname’s exploitation of its natural resources. There is only one problem: our political leadership has no viable vision beyond begging, borrowing and bragging.

Under President Venetiaan, Suriname is aggressively pushing for new investors despite already having them invest in gold, alumina and petroleum as the country’s main exports, but there is still room for investments in tourism (which saw a 40% increase between 2006 and 2008), health, telecommunication and transportation among others. Suriname also is not bashful about advertising its geographic proximity to the Atlantic Ocean “as a strategic outlet for North American investors (note whom they are targeting here) looking to make inroads into South America and want to start with a smaller, yet competitive, market that is in expansion. The trend is for the economy to increasingly open up and to become more and more Foreign Direct Investment-friendly.” Whither Guyana?

Despite Guyana’s negligible US$960M in FDIs over a 13-year period under the PPP, I have said before and will keep saying that foreign direct investments (in a liberalized, non-politicized economy that accentuates the role of the private sector) remain Guyana’s principal hope for genuine, accelerated economic recovery. Instead of talking about Guyana’s economy growing 3%  in 2008 or, based on a revision by the WB, being set to record just above 2% economic growth in 2009, we should be talking 5% to 7% annual growth. There actually was a period of time under Desmond Hoyte when Guyana’s economy grew a robust 7% a year, but then the decline started shortly before Dr Cheddi Jagan passed away. When will we ever see 7% annual economic growth again?

The average growth of Suriname’s economy since 2003 has reportedly exceeded 5% per year, with GDP growth in 2007 reaching 5.5%, but it is the government’s focus on investments that has captured for Surinamese and domestic and foreign investors a picture of a visionary in President Venetiaan, whose government has “actively sought to welcome investment initiatives, and is slowly moving towards a simplified, more transparent set of trade and investment laws that can settle commercial disputes more efficiently.”

Unlike Guyana, which seems to have a frosty attitude towards American investors, Suriname actually looks to the United States, among other foreign investors, to help in commercial development of its natural resources and aiding in the financing of infrastructural improvements. In fact, the US is one of Suriname’s major trade partners, thanks to the presence of ALCOA’s decades of investments in Suriname’s bauxite mining and processing industry. Jamaica, by the way, also has ALCOA, and is doing just fine, but Guyana has decided to settle on RUSAL, a Russian company. What’s wrong with Guyana? Why do we have to be the odd man out? No wonder our economy is teetering along on loans and grants and remittances, while Suriname flourishes and beckons our hurting fellow Guyanese to bring their skill and dogged will. After all, in 2007, Suriname’s per capita GDP was said to be US$4,830 compared to US$1,111 for Guyana.

Back in Guyana, President Jagdeo is banking heavily on receiving US$580M a year towards his forest preservation agenda, which is not a bad idea if all the pieces can fall into place at the right time, but that truly is a chimera in these uncertain economic times when every industrialized or developed government and climate-conscious organization is looking to cut expenses while trying to get the maximum benefits out of their investments. The President seems to have put all his eggs in this one basket and has not said what his Plan B is, or what is his big-time vision for Guyana outside getting easy money to preserve our pristine forests. Incidentally, more than 80% of Suriname’s land-mass consists of unspoiled rain forest, and with the establishment of the Central Suriname Nature Reserve in 1998, Suriname signalled its commitment to conservation of this precious resource, yet we are not hearing President Venetiaan making speeches about money for preserving the forests there.

Something is radically wrong with President Jagdeo’s economic focus and he might take a cue from the guy standing next to his girlfriend contemplating a decision in the face of a dilemma when he rhetorically asked her, “What’s a man to do?” and she responded with: “Why not ask another man?” At this juncture, I don’t think the President shouldn’t be afraid or too proud to ask for helpful advice.

Rather than winging it all over the globe looking for governments and organizations to help him achieve his new-found climate change dream, in which he still cannot tell the forest from the trees, he should cross the eastern border and seek out a true visionary.

Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin