Qatar's success in turning its energy resources into a diversified, industrialised economy offers valuable lessons for Guyana.

That was the assessment of President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who made the comments during a special interview on Guyana-Qatar relations. He pointed to Qatar's use of natural gas to drive large-scale industrialisation and manufacturing, alongside its investments in human capital, food security, education, tourism and sports.

Central to that success, the president noted, is how Qatar has managed its small citizen population while still securing a strong position in the world — a story, he said, with many synergies with Guyana's own.

"Qatar really gives us that platform of partnership that understands the challenges of small population, but also converted those challenges into opportunities," he said. "That is why I see Qatar as a model that is highly applicable."

Building on that comparison, the Guyanese leader added that Guyana has even greater opportunities, given its wide base of natural resources. These include freshwater, arable land and a diversified mining sector spanning gold, bauxite, diamond, sand and manganese.

With that potential in mind, President Ali said that, based on the advice received so far, the best option for Guyana is to bring its gas onshore and develop a downstream industry. He noted that the global energy matrix will eventually shift, and Guyana must start building for that now.

Narrow View

It is this long-term thinking that led him to reject the view that the country should monetise its gas, a stance he described as "simplistic" and "a narrow view."
"We want to create long-term opportunity. We want to create opportunities for Guyana for the next 50, 60 years," he said. "We do that by leveraging this resource, creating value from this resource, and the value is created by the downstream industry."

To that end, President Ali outlined several industries the gas could power: an alumina plant to process local bauxite, a large-scale urea plant integrated with agriculture and distribution across the Caribbean, hyperscale data centres, and agro-processing, manufacturing and bottling.

In turn, he said, these industries would grow the transport and logistics sector, strengthen port activity and deepen connectivity with northern Brazil.

"That is why I believe gas is an important part of building out the energy sector through our own demand, creating home-based demand, local demand, by having the sophisticated investors coming in here...and create added opportunities for diversification and our long-term economic prospects," he explained.

Strong Investment Interest

This vision, he said, is already gaining traction. Reflecting on his second state visit to Qatar, the president said Doha is ready to partner with Guyana at the government-to-government level and alongside the private sector. The two nations will work in the coming weeks to develop a national project framework identifying priorities.

Among the projects already under discussion is a deepwater port, being developed with Bechtel and expected to cost billions of US dollars. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and US EXIM have all signalled interest in investing in the project.

Beyond the port, the president said Qatar has also shown interest in several other areas: the energy sector, including distribution and transmission, infrastructure, agriculture, food security and hospitality, mining and additional offshore blocks, where it is already part of a partnership. Qatar, he added, has also provided some technical advice to Guyana, and its expertise in gas and downstream industries is critical to the partnership.

The president said the end goal of the transformation is a country where citizens can "aspire to be the best you can be without worrying about who is going to support those aspirations." (Reworked from DPI)