President Ali – Port Mourant Training Centre to be turned into National Oil and Gas Institute

President Irfaan Ali yesterday disclosed that the Port Mourant Training Centre would be
transformed into the country’s National Oil and Gas Institute.
Ali made the disclosure while delivering remarks after his site visit to the Berbice Deep Water
Port, which is being constructed by Canadian company CGX Energy Inc, through its subsidiary
Grand Canal Industrial Estates Inc (GCIE). The President reminisced on the quality of the
craftsmen that the centre has produced throughout the years, many of whom excelled outside of
Guyana.
With its drive for excellence, he disclosed that it would be the perfect location to have the
transformation area of study. He repeated the government’s plan to invest heavily in the
education sector, who said that the platform and infrastructure will be created to ensure that
teachers and nurses can pursue their post-graduate studies remotely in the region via distance and
online education. “Young teachers, you can become a trained teacher from right here in Berbice.
That is the investment platform we are building,” the President said.
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
The Head of Sate said that high on the agenda of his Government is to transparently design
Guyana’s future so that it will deliver prosperity for the next generation. He stressed that this will
ensure that the framework is created so that the current generation can enjoy the benefits of
Guyana’s economic potential and continuous growth. “The objective of the plan for this region
and a national strategy is to build sustainable communities,” Ali said. The resident pointed out
that sustainable communities are built on many different attributes, including sustainable jobs,
social services that are second to none, education, health, infrastructure, water, electricity,
economic empowerment and opportunities.
He noted that added to that, there is also a need to reduce the disparity between the rich and the
‘not so rich’ and between genders. These fundamental elements of sustainable development will
be added to the national and regional plans to ensure an across-the-board implementation.  “If we
have a deep-water harbour in Region Six that is linked to Suriname and linked to other
opportunities, the infrastructure must be in place to take care of this. You must have wider roads;
you must have better highways, and most people do not understand that Region Six has the
important catalytic push to bring what we call trans-border development,” the president
explained.
Ali stressed that very soon, the project to expand the highway closer to international standards
will be launched and will represent an investment of more than US$100M. “Whilst we’re doing
all of this, we’re expanding community roads, infrastructure. We’re investing heavily in drainage
and irrigation services, and importantly, we are finalising arrangements for a new state-of-the-art
hospital for first-world service here in Region Six because the focus is on healthcare,” Ali
declared. President Ali also said that in January, there would be a summit between Guyana,
Brazil, Suriname and France—who has requested to join—to discuss the creation of an energy

hub. “We’re discussing a joint gas strategy between Guyana and Suriname, and the gas is not
only linked to the production of power or energy. For those of you who don’t know, in Region
Six lies one of the largest A-grade bauxite deposits for Guyana. With cheaper power, cheaper
energy and the combination of the bauxite on our side and the other side of the river, it makes the
economic viability of a smelter possible—and not only possible— financially viable. A smelter
that leads to an aluminium plant leads to constant work and a justification for a deep-water port
that will be of the size and magnitude we can’t even imagine,” the Head of State reiterated.
The President also reminded of Government’s investment in the ICT, housing and agriculture
sectors in the region. “So aquaculture, swamp shrimp, agro-processing—we’re not only talking
the talk. In Black Bush, we have supported the building of an agro-processing facility by Umami.
They are now going to take the excess production from Black Bush and package it…for the
CARICOM market, for the European market, for the Canadian market, for the US and for the
first time, that company now has a shop front on Amazon, and that’s shopfront carries 100%
Guyanese products,” he stressed.
President Ali added that those initiatives are just the “appetiser on the menu of opportunities that
will come your way.”