President strikes back at criticsGuyana Chronicle December 12, 1999
MIAMI, (CANA) - Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday dismissed critics who believed that his Russian training as an economist meant that he was insincere about market-driven policies. Addressing the final day of the four-day 23rd Annual Miami Conference on trade, investment and development, Jagdeo pointed to U.S. President Bill Clinton's call for advocates of private sector-led development to be cautious about the viciousness of capitalism. "I sincerely believe that this is the way forward. It doesn't mean that we don't have a social conscience," said Mr Jagdeo, who holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the Patrice Lumumba University in the former Soviet Union. "I am quite pleased to see that President Clinton speaks about the vicious side of capitalism today and he is a leader of the free-world so you have more of a middling of positions from the extremes because the kind of process that was advocated in the past was in the extreme," Mr Jagdeo said. Striking back at critics who often cited the fact that he preaches government's commitment to private sector-led growth, President Jagdeo made indirect reference to the fact that the late President Forbes Burnham of the then People's National Congress (PNC)-led administration and late President Dr Cheddi Jagan of the ruling People's Progressive Party (PPP/Civic) were both Western-trained professionals who preached leftist policies. "There have been these stereotypes that have been created years and years ago when there was this Cold War and we - businessmen, government, intelligent people - have to get behind those stereotypes," said the 35-year old President Jagdeo. The Guyanese leader maintained that investment was the key to economic growth and the creation of employment but highlighted the importance of a tax system that rewarded initiatives to take care of poverty and other social ills that could otherwise create a volatile investment climate. "If you don't, you will create more problems for investors because more people will resort to crime," he told hundreds of delegates at the Miami Conference organised by Caribbean Latin American Action (CLAA), a non-profit organisation. Since Mr Jagdeo's PPP/Civic won the 1992 elections and regained power at the 1997 polls, it has continued policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These include shrinking the state sector from 40 companies to at least four and stripping governmental interest in four of the five financial institutions, the remaining one being managed by a private management contract. Major investments since the opening up of the economy in the late 1980s are the Canadian-majority-owned Omai Gold Mines Limited, the Malaysian/South Korean plywood concern Barama Company Limited and the privatisation of the phone company to the US Virgin islands based Atlantic Tele Network. In addition to several medium scale investments in the tourism, manufacturing, gold and forestry industry during its tenure, the PPP/Civic administration is working feverishly to bring in the Texas-based Beal Aerospace Incorporated to set up a US$50M rocket launch site in north western Guyana. US and Canadian oil companies are currently conducting offshore oil explorations in the Atlantic Ocean with at least one of them planning to set up an oil rig to determine whether it would be feasible to extract crude oil in commercial quantities.
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