The Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to Guyana, Nicole The­ri­ot, says com­mer­cial ties be­tween the two coun­tries have be­come “deep­er than ever” with trade amount­ing to more than US$6.4 bil­lion last year.

“ Just a few years ago, we trad­ed a few 100 mil­lion US dol­lars worth of goods, but last year, we sur­passed US$4.6 bil­lion. We now have over 100 US com­pa­nies in Guyana, and that num­ber is grow­ing every day, The­ri­ot told a cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the 248th an­niver­sary of the Unit­ed States that will be of­fi­cial­ly cel­e­brat­ed on Ju­ly 4.

She told the cer­e­mo­ny that was at­tend­ed by Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and se­nior mem­bers of his gov­ern­ment, that through trade mis­sions, con­fer­ences, and ex­changes be­tween the pri­vate sec­tors of both coun­tries “our com­pa­nies are un­leash­ing eco­nom­ic growth that sup­ports the em­ploy­ment of thou­sands, pro­vid­ing a bet­ter fu­ture for Guyana.

“ And it is oc­cur­ring in many sec­tors. En­er­gy, of course, is a key eco­nom­ic dri­ver, but we see ac­tiv­i­ty in ar­eas of health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, and agri­cul­ture. And new US tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing adopt­ed by Guyanese firms and the gov­ern­ment to make them more ef­fi­cient and com­pet­i­tive.”

The US diplo­mat said that she loves “see­ing all over George­town, US brand­ed ho­tels be­ing con­struct­ed, along with US restau­rants open­ing new lo­ca­tions”.

She said that the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) of­fice here is now con­duct­ing mul­ti­ple pro­grammes to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty, small busi­ness in­cu­ba­tion, women’s eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty, and in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing.

She said sup­port­ing Pres­i­dent Ali’s vi­sion of turn­ing Guyana in­to the food se­cu­ri­ty hub of the Caribbean, US­AID is work­ing to bring prod­ucts like turmer­ic, co­conut, and West In­di­an cher­ries to mar­ket both in Guyana and abroad.

The­ri­ot said that the US Peace Corps vol­un­teers are now 38-strong and they are work­ing through­out the coun­try, part­ner­ing with schools and gov­ern­ment min­istries.

“They work along­side com­mu­ni­ties in the crit­i­cal ar­eas of lit­er­a­cy, health, and the en­vi­ron­ment,” she said, adding that the cul­tur­al con­nec­tions are deep­er than ever.

“ Alum­ni of U.S. ex­changes such as the Young Lead­ers of the Amer­i­c­as and our very pop­u­lar In­ter­na­tion­al Vis­i­tors Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme use valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence gained in the US to make a dif­fer­ence in com­mu­ni­ties across Guyana.”

She said that the alum­ni fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ial in­no­va­tion among women, train teach­ers in in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion, and in­spire youth to be­come en­gaged lead­ers in their com­mu­ni­ties.