President Bharrat Jagdeo is to leave today for the Middle East where he is expected to attend the summit of South American and Arab leaders in Qatar.

The president at a press conference at his New Garden Street office yesterday said he and his team also plan to visit several countries in that region.

“But more importantly as I have mentioned publicly at several locations we have to open new frontiers for investments and markets and several years ago I spoke about the new frontiers being places like India, China and Brazil, the newly emerging global powers which will over time overtake many of the other countries…,” the head of state said. However, he said Guyana needs to extend the frontiers to other countries particularly to those in the Middle East since they are significant sources of funds for investments in the developed world as well as the developing world.

“So in light of the global credit crunch and the difficulties that firms have in North America and Europe and some of the other developed countries, to raise money for investment I think we have to present the best opportunities to these regions,” the president said. He said based on discussions with Libya it appears that the major interest would be in agriculture and forestry, forestry from the perspective of value added for the country’s products. He said there is also some interest in mining.

“These three areas at this point and time seem to be major areas we may be able to accept large scale investments…,” the president said, while adding that renewable energy and tourism are always areas of interest.