Gov’t working on creating stable political environment – to attract investors, create jobs –Finance Minister

Georgetown, GINA, August 3, 2016

A stable political environment is crucial to attracting investors and creating long-term jobs for Guyanese, as no one comes to invest in an unstable setting, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan said.

In a recent interview with media operatives, the Finance Minister said the government is working toward the creation of a stable political environment to attract investors which will offer long-term jobs to Guyanese.

Additionally, Minister Jordan said value-added production has an important role in determining the kinds of investors and quality of jobs which will be created in the long- term.

“All the talk about jobs – many of these jobs are merely temporary, based on the project that you might be implementing or an investor comes and you get some of those jobs, many of which aren’t permanent. Do not let anybody fool you that they could bring you 10,000 jobs tomorrow, jobs don’t just come like that.  You have to look at the quality of jobs; we could bring any amount of people here and they employ lower skilled persons like security guards, all those are temporary, what we want is more sustainable jobs and for that we need to right the wrongs that are in the economy at the moment,” Minister Jordan said.

Addressing the need for diversification, the Minister said, “To create permanent jobs we have to look at the sectors, we have to have an agriculture sector that is more diversified, not sugar and just rice, it has to be far more diversified in terms of the crops that we plant and what we do after we plant those crops, in terms of adding the second and third and fourth stages of production,” Minister Jordan said.

The Minister acknowledged that there are challenges associated with re-aligning the country’s productive sectors to ensure the creation of high quality, long-term jobs for Guyanese. “What we want are more permanent jobs and for that we need to right the wrongs…. after 50 years you can’t ask me to do that in one year or two years or indeed even in five years, but you have to build the foundation to make certain that the bloodletting and the pain that you are going through now don’t continue forever,” Jordan pointed out.

“What I can tell you is that we are putting in place, both from the political and the economic stand point, we are trying as hard as we can to get this political environment stabilised, then we have to look at the economy. We are trying to get that stabilised even if we have to do a bit more on our side as it relates to pumping some money into the economy to get it going, we are working with different sectors.”

Leading up to the May 2015 regional and general elections, the APNU + AFC Coalition had promised that it would aim, “To create a new economy that will stimulate rapid development through Guyana’s transformation from a raw material producer to a manufacturer of value added goods and services.”