Larry Luxner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

     Bharrat Jagdeo, 37, is a Soviet-trained economist and former finance minister who became president of Guyana two years ago upon the resignation of
Janet Jagan. He was interviewed for The Washington Times in Georgetown, Guyana, by reporter Larry Luxner.
 
     Question: What are your biggest challenges as president of Guyana?
     Answer: We still have this colonial legacy of a divided people, and I see that as one of our many challenges — forging the people together into a Guyanese
identity. The second challenge has to do with changing the structure of our economy, by diversifying.
     Apart from the traditional sectors, such as rice, sugar, bauxite, forest products, we now have a rapidly developing information-technology sector. Ecotourism is
also growing rapidly. I'm very excited about this. We have also been actively exploring for oil, and all indications are that Guyana has tremendous potential.
     Q: How is Guyana's economy doing?
     A: We had forecast 3 percent growth for 2001, but we ended the year at around 2 percent. In spite of the reduction of income, we have managed a strong fiscal
monetary program to maintain the macroeconomic fundamentals.
     We have not seen a deterioration of our currency, interest rates have not moved up, our balance of payments position did not deteriorate, and our fiscal deficit has
been shrinking. We have been able to give more incentives to the private sector, but we still have numerous challenges.
     Q: How has your education under the Soviet system affected your decision-making as finance minister and now as president?
     A: The training we had [in the U.S.S.R.] was heavily mathematics. But we had an advantage in that, since we had we had come out of a Western system and a lot
of our textbooks were published in the West, we had the possibility of comparing that to what was taught in the university. A lot of the lessons we learned in the
U.S.S.R. can be replicated here.
     Q: Yet the opposition People's National Congress calls your People's Progressive Party a Marxist party. Does ideology in fact play any role in your economic
policies?
     A: Development in Guyana today has nothing to do with ideology. I am aggressively pursuing foreign capital. We have the freest economy in the Caribbean, and
possibly in the hemisphere. We've repealed the Capital Issues Act, which prevented foreign companies from raising capital in our market. We have removed the
Exchange Control Act, so there's no restriction on movement of money in and out of the country. People can come to Guyana and live here freely.
     Q: What are you doing to attract foreign investment?
     A: We in Guyana are committed to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), unlike Cuba, which has a different position. As we all get closer, borders
become irrelevant. We're promoting larger South American regional integration, and borders should not be there to divide people.
     Q: Yet Guyana has an ongoing border dispute with Venezuela. Where does that stand?
     A: This is a very old problem, and both sides have committed themselves to a peaceful resolution of the issue. We have an ongoing process with the U.N.
secretary-general, and I've had discussions with [Venezuela´s] President [Hugo] Chavez.
     Q: What is Guyana's role within the framework of hemispheric integration?
     A: We are in a critical position. Guyana is the headquarters of Caricom, and we're part of the Caribbean, but we're also part of the South American mainland. I
feel that Guyana's future lies to the south, as well as the north. We have the unique opportunity of opening a door for the Caribbean into South America, and of being
a gateway for Brazil's northern states to the Atlantic. That's the role we're aggressively pursuing."

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