Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali and First Lady Arya Ali are in the Dominican Republic heading a large mission that is visiting 8-9 August 2023 for bilateral discussions and signing of agreements in the areas of agriculture, energy, IT, and tourism.
President Luis Abinader received President Irfaan Ali with all the honors at the Presidential Palace on Tuesday, 8 August 2023. The DR and Guyana have had diplomatic relations since 1970.
The meetings are a follow up to a visit by President Luis Abinader, government ministers and business people to Guyana in 1-2 June 2023.
President Abinader has spoken of the synergies, pointing out that what the DR has Guyana lacks and vice versa.
The Dominican Republic and Guyana agree to establish a framework to facilitate and enhance bilateral cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector of the two countries based on equality and mutual benefit. The countries agreed to promote investments in each other’s countries, technology transfer, research and development, the building of human resources and collaboration in the natural gas sector.
Currently, Guyana has proven reserves of some 11 billion barrels of crude offshore in the ExxonMobil-operated Stabroek Block alone.
A recent MoU signed by Guyana Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat and Dominican Republic Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez creates the opportunity for support towards financing and construction of a refinery in Guyana.
The members of the visiting Guyana mission accompanying the President of Guyana are:
Minister of Tourism and Commerce, Oneidge Walrond; the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Robert Persaud; Guyana Defense Force Chief of Staff Omar Khan; Guyana Police Force Commissioner Clifton Hicken; the National Security adviser, Captain Gerald Gouveia; the executive director of the Guyana Investment Office, Peter Ramsaroop; the director of Presidential Affairs, Office of the President, Marcia Nadir-Sharma, and the director general of the Ministry of Agriculture, Madanlall Ramraj.
In addition, the director of the Secretariat of Local Content of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Martín Pertab; the legal officer of the Department of Petroleum of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Michael Munroe; New Hayven Commercial Bank Chairman of the Board, Floyd Haynes; and Entrepreneurial Businessman, Shameer Mohammed.
Guyana with less than a million inhabitants and a size of 214,970 km² compares to the DR with a population of more than 11 million and a size of 48,670 km². After Exxon confirmed immense oil stocks in Guyana in 2015, the country has gone from being a largely impoverished nation to one now described as among the world’s top five offshore oil producers.
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9 August 2023