By Isaiah Braithwaite
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, (DPI) – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has expressed interest in helping Guyana to boost its agriculture production, a move, president, Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali said would be in keeping with the government’s vision to make Guyana the food basket of the Caribbean, and build a framework that would ensure Guyana has the greatest level of productivity.
Dr Ali disclosed on Sunday, as he launched the black belly sheep project in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice). The UAE produces an average of three million barrels of petroleum and liquids per day and has oil reserves of 100 billion barrels.
President Ali disclosed that during his recent participation at the Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF2022) and the Global Business Forum LATAM, agriculture was the main focus.
“I just came back from the UAE and 90 percent of the conversation with the leadership of the UAE and the private sector, was not on oil and gas, 90 percent of the conversation was on food security and agriculture diversification and production. We had discussions with three of the largest state-backed institutions, that are going to be here to work with us, to partner with us. The Emirate future group, the Al Dahra Group and the Elite Group, are three of the largest players in agriculture and food production,” the president disclosed.
Dr Ali stressed that Guyana has all the competitive advantages, noting that the only task now is catalysing it into action so that the country and its people could benefit.
“This journey is so important not only for Guyana and the region; we are already leaders in many areas whether it is on the environment and climate change, oil and gas, our human resource capacity, we must not only dream, but it is now in our reach to be the leader in food production,” he further stated.
The head of state also disclosed that “next week we have a team coming in that we met in the United Arab Emirates and are part of West Jet Cargo to look at adding the cargo facility for direct export to North America. These are all initiatives that we are fast-tracking and we are going after in a very aggressive manner.”
President Ali said this is all part of building relationships so that the vision of Guyana becoming a net food exporter can be realised. He stressed the revenues from oil and gas must be used to build the country’s agricultural system, infrastructure and technology.
