The Guyana gov­ern­ment says it will an­nounce a se­ries of sup­port pack­ages to mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion in­clud­ing a GUY$150,000 (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) cash grant for each fish­er­man and the re­moval of tax­es on key ma­te­ri­als used in the sec­tor.

“We’re go­ing to give GUY$150,000 to every fish­er­folk out there to help them as an in­cen­tive and sub­sidy from the gov­ern­ment,” Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said, adding his ad­min­is­tra­tion will soon an­nounce a se­ries of com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures for house­holds and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble groups.

“I am go­ing to an­nounce, be­fore the end of the year, a se­ries of mea­sures, not on­ly look­ing at cash grant, but look­ing at the to­tal em­pow­er­ment of every Guyanese, whether you are some­one liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty, the el­der­ly, chil­dren, women, small busi­ness­es, farm­ers – every cat­e­go­ry,” he said.

Ali said that the ini­tia­tive is part of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en the fish­ing in­dus­try and im­prove liveli­hoods in coastal and river­ine com­mu­ni­ties.

In ad­di­tion to the di­rect cash sup­port, fu­el, seines, and oth­er es­sen­tial ma­te­ri­als will now be tax-free, help­ing to re­duce op­er­a­tional costs for fish­er­folk.

This lat­est ini­tia­tive builds on a se­ries of gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tions in the fish­eries sec­tor. In 2022, over GUY$1.1 bil­lion in grants was dis­trib­uted to more than 7,500 fish­er­folk across Guyana.

The gov­ern­ment has al­so been up­grad­ing land­ing and pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties, pro­vid­ing train­ing, and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able and cli­mate-re­silient fish­ing prac­tices.

Ali said that to en­sure every­one ben­e­fits, he is en­cour­ag­ing mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion to open bank ac­counts, as this would al­low for the smooth and ef­fi­cient pay­ment of grants.

Last year, the gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted GUY$100,000 in cash grants to every adult Guyanese. That ini­tia­tive com­ple­ment­ed the GUY$50,000 Be­cause We Care stu­dent grant, the GUY$100,000 New Born Grant and sev­er­al oth­er so­cial sup­port pro­grammes im­ple­ment­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

CMC/gt/ir/2025

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Nov 6, CMC –