Granger’s office slaps down Nagamootoo on int’l reluctance to help Guyana

…rubbishes his comments

Just days after caretaker Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo admitted that international agencies might be reluctant to help Guyana until a president is sworn in, the Ministry of the Presidency has issued a statement denying this and rubbishing his statement.

In a statement on Saturday, the Ministry of the Presidency (MotP) said no international agency has made aid to Guyana conditional on the elections. The Ministry pointed out that Government remains engaged with its international partners, and the United States Government recently furnished Guyana with US$475,000.

Guyana has noted reports published in Friday’s daily newspapers suggesting that foreign partners as well as international financial institutions are unwilling to provide Guyana with financial aid to combat the dreaded Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) because the country’s electoral process is incomplete.
That suggestion is “inaccurate.”
The Ministry said it wishes to make it clear that no international financial institution has linked support to Guyana’s national COVID-19 campaign to the outcome of the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections.
“No international financial institution has indicated that financial aid has been made conditional upon the completion of the electoral process,” the Ministry statement said.
It has been weeks since Guyana applied to the World Bank for emergency funding to fight the coronavirus pandemic. While other countries were provided with funding, Guyana was excluded.
On Thursday, Nagamootoo was asked during a Zoom press conference, when Guyana could expect funding to be made available by bilateral partners.
“I believe that, because of the political situation in Guyana, while we are in transition to a Government that will emerge after March 2, 2020, we cannot say for sure whether some of these international multilateral lending agencies are going to be dealing with Guyana’s applications any time soon.
They probably would want to sit it out and wait until the President is sworn in,”
Nagamootoo said in response:
“So, we are being updated on that. We have an ongoing relationship with the Inter-American Development Bank in terms of several projects that will be reconfigured into Covid-related projects. I’m told that will be a huge sum of money, just under US$80 million.”
The Ministry’s denial came just hours after a shake-up in which the caretaker President appointed former Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency, Joseph Harmon, to manage the National COVID Task Force’s operations. The announcement was made on Friday that Harmon would be the Chief Executive Officer of the Task Force.
Granger only last week said he had intervened in the task force decision after Nagamootoo had given directives to Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) that would have delayed the recount. Among the directives that Nagamootoo gave were for all observers coming into Guyana to observe the recount at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre be subject to 14 days’ quarantine in a Government facility.
Nagamootoo had also told GECOM that they could not go past the curfew hours during the recount. After an outcry from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), however, Granger intervened and these directives were rescinded.
It was determined that observers would be pre-tested in their home country and not be quarantined. Persons have posited, however, that the directives were politically inspired and designed to deter observers from coming to Guyana.