Ali urges 72-hour push to fix T&T–Guyana hurdles

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

Guyana's Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali is urg­ing T&T and Guyana to come to­geth­er for 72 hours to fix the prob­lems which cur­rent­ly stop the coun­tries from fi­nal­is­ing a strong eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship.

In his fea­ture ad­dress at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try & Com­merce busi­ness meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency to­day, the Guyanese Pres­i­dent said it was im­por­tant that both coun­tries, which are pro­pelled by oil and gas, fu­ture-proof their economies.

How­ev­er, the Guyanese Pres­i­dent called for the lead­ers of both coun­tries to iron out bu­reau­crat­ic is­sues which were cur­rent­ly hin­drances to such a part­ner­ship.

"If we care about part­ner­ship, if we care about build­ing con­sor­tiums. We care about build­ing a joint eco­nom­ic front be­tween Guyana & Trinidad and To­ba­go 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," said Ali, who al­so stressed there were prospects out­side of en­er­gy where both coun­tries could de­vel­op through part­ner­ship point­ing to Guyana's ex­port of soya beans and T&T's fa­mous co­coa plant.

While he praised the ANSA McAL group for lead­ing the way through its in­vest­ments in the South Amer­i­can state, in­clud­ing its de­vel­op­ment of a shop­ping mall, he lament­ed that there was no T&T con­sor­tium that had tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in Guyanese gold.

The Guyanese Pres­i­dent was al­so crit­i­cal of the lengthy process to go through im­mi­gra­tion in T&T as he sug­gest­ed this bu­reau­cra­cy al­so held back Caribbean Air­lines from its full po­ten­tial.