Former resident representative at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Saqib Rizavi is confident that Guyana’s policymakers are fully capable of maintaining macroeconomic stability, given the country’s track record so far.
In an interview with Stabroek News Rizavi said that overall Guyana has performed well and this has been recognized by the IMF Board and other multilateral institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Caribbean Development Bank. “Guyana was able to receive full disbursements under its last Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility arrangement. Further, it was deemed eligible to receive debt relief under the original HIPC Initiative (US$256M in Net Present Value terms), and under the enhanced HIPC Initiative (US$335M in NPV terms), and then also under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (from the IMF nearly US$45M in NPV terms),” he said.
Rizavi noted too that recently the IDB provided debt relief to Guyana. “So all this indicates that Guyana has been judged to have performed well,” he said.
As regard governance, Rizavi said government and other stakeholders are cognizant of the benefits of good economic governance. “Ensuring good economic governance is fundamentally a decision which the Government and the people of Guyana have to make and implement it through their policies,” he said.
He said that Guyana and the IMF staff maintain close collaboration through Article IV consultation missions, staff visits, and other informal contacts to seek ways and means which would help Guyana achieve its objectives of macroeconomic stability, sustained growth, and poverty reduction.
“The collaboration between Guyana and the IMF mostly takes place through policy advice, technical assistance, and financial support, if need be and if requested by the Government,” he said. He said that the current relationship between Guyana and the IMF is very similar to that between the IMF and its other members and Guyana, as a member of the IMF, is eligible to receive policy advice, technical assistance, and financial support.
As regard the secrecy of some IMF documents, Rizavi said that according to the decision of the IMF Executive Board, a member country has the right to choose whether it would like to publish its IMF documents or not. “There are some documents whose publication is required, for example, HIPC and PRSP documents.
The reason for giving the countries this choice is that in many instances, given the nature of the IMF work, the documents contain what we call ‘market sensitive information’. For example, if there is a discussion about a weak bank, if the information becomes public it could start a run on the bank,” he said. He added that if the view of the IMF staff is that if there is no market sensitive information, it would be useful for the countries to publish the documents.
Rizavi has returned to Washington DC from where he will still have some level of oversight on the Guyana IMF office.
