Further signaling that the country’s significant oil reserves will strongly influence the shape of the country’s foreign policy, going forward, the government of Guyana, through the Department of Public Information has announced that it has signed “two major loan agreements worth US$150 million with the Saudi Fund for infrastructural development, which funding will be used to finance “infrastructural Development Works for the Housing Sector Project” as well as the Wismar Bridge Project.
Having established its bona fides as an oil-producing country, the PPP/C administration has moved swiftly to strengthen what, hitherto had been less than robust ties with the region. Visits to various countries in the region at the levels of both senior government officials and contingents of “creative people” were ‘topped’ on May 17 with the official opening of a Guyana Diplomatic Mission in Qatar, a move which is expected to serve as a bridge for the strengthening technical cooperation between Guyana and the region as a whole in areas that are expected to include cooperation in the energy field. Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali is quoted as saying that the establishment of formal diplomatic ties with Qatar is likely to help both countries to “embark on a journey of an enhanced bilateral relationship.”
Analysts of Qatar’s foreign policy see the small, oil-rich monarchy as having a disproportionately significant impact on the Middle East’s foreign policy, as a whole, through its preparedness to insert itself in a wide range of issues that impact on the Middle East, as a whole. Qatar has been responsive to ‘feelers’ put out by the Government of Guyana on investment in tourism and back in September last year the country hosted the first Qatari tourists to visit Guyana.
