PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, is call­ing for a 72-hour meet­ing be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana to se­ri­ous­ly en­gage in es­tab­lish­ing a strong eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship.

He made the ap­peal dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s an­nu­al busi­ness meet­ing and out­look, held at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

He made the call hours be­fore he met with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day at the Par­lia­ment, who said she will be trav­el­ling to Guyana soon on an of­fi­cial vis­it.

Ali said that while both coun­tries have been pro­pelled by the oil and gas in­dus­tries, it is im­por­tant to fu­ture-proof their economies through di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“If we care about part­ner­ship, if we care about build­ing con­sor­tiums. We care about build­ing a joint eco­nom­ic front be­tween Guyana and T&T, then we must care about fix­ing the prob­lem and let’s get in that room, lock our­selves up for 72 hours and fix the damn prob­lem,” Ali said.

He al­so stressed that there are prospects out­side of en­er­gy where both coun­tries could de­vel­op through part­ner­ship, point­ing to Guyana’s pend­ing ex­port of soya beans.

In con­trast, he not­ed that while T&T has been fa­mous for its Trini­tario co­coa, the brand’s po­ten­tial could be ex­pand­ed fur­ther through such col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“You’re rat­ed any­where you go. But how are we build­ing that brand? How are you in­vest­ing to up­skill that brand? How are you in­vest­ing in the ge­net­ics to main­tain the brand? Where are we iden­ti­fied as a new area for de­vel­op­ment to take this brand - it is re­ori­ent­ing the en­tire sys­tem. You see, one of the prob­lems in the re­gion is that we have not cre­at­ed enough sys­temic op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Ali said.

How­ev­er, the Pres­i­dent Ali al­so point­ed to sev­er­al bu­reau­crat­ic is­sues that are cur­rent­ly hin­drances to such a part­ner­ship, in­clud­ing the im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem em­ployed at T&T’s air­ports.

“We want to build Caribbean Air­lines. We want Caribbean Air­lines to have the mas­sive mar­ket share. You go to Qatar or any­where you’re in tran­sit, when you come out, you go through a spe­cif­ic door, and you wait to be con­nect­ed to your next flight. You’re com­ing from Guyana. You clear the se­cu­ri­ty, you’re tran­sit­ing the next coun­try. You get to Trinidad and To­ba­go you have to walk and go back through the en­tire se­cu­ri­ty. Go back through im­mi­gra­tion, come back to the en­tire sys­tem. What mess is that?” Ali said, adding that he had re­cent­ly im­ple­ment­ed im­prove­ments to sim­i­lar sys­tems in Guyana.

“We have to fix this prob­lem. We have to fix our bor­ders. We’re try­ing. I mean, I don’t know how many of you went back re­cent­ly, but many of you call me and say, Thank you, be­cause I have a dash­board, and I can tell you every sin­gle day how many peo­ple came through im­mi­gra­tion, the av­er­age time it took to clear them, the av­er­age time it took for each of­fi­cer to clear it up, so I know where the in­ef­fi­cien­cy is. We can tell,” he said, not­ing that red tape has of­ten sti­fled the po­ten­tial of both coun­tries de­spite the im­mense rich­es they have earned from the oil and gas sec­tor.

“We can’t come and say we want to man­age the gas plant but then you can’t bring two con­tain­ers of limes in­to Trinidad to­day. It doesn’t work, let us be hon­est. It can­not work, and we must end this non­sense now. It is com­plete non­sense. It is mind-blow­ing that we can not sit in a room to­geth­er as gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor fix these prob­lems,” Ali ad­vised.

He praised the ANSA McAL Group for lead­ing the way through its in­vest­ments in the South Amer­i­can state, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a shop­ping mall and ef­forts to stream­line the process for ob­tain­ing the nec­es­sary clear­ances, but he lament­ed that there has not been wider in­vest­ment in Guyana’s nat­ur­al re­sources by Trinida­di­an com­pa­nies.