Brazil 100 per cent committed to Boa Vista-Georgetown road

BRAZIL’s Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, said, on Thursday, that his government is interested in moving briskly ahead to secure funding for a Boa Vista to Georgetown road, which will open up greater development to Guyana and Brazil.

He made the remarks during a live interview with Roraima Senator, Chico Rodrigues. For context, the state of Roraima, in Brazil, is located snug in between the southern borders of Guyana and Venezuela. It is home to Bonfim, the current and official crossover point for Guyanese or Brazilians into Lethem in Region Nine.

Guyana’s consecutive Governments have had their eyes set on a Brazil to Guyana highway which would open up endless possibilities for the two countries. Brazil and Guyana have long expressed intentions of working together in this regard.

Addressing these plans on Thursday, Minister Guedes said: “We want to make this road from Boa Vista – Georgetown. It has 100 per cent support from us. Senator Chico Rodrigues, we will work with BNDES [Brazilian Development Bank] and internationally with the IMF, World Bank; we will work with the IDB, the Inter-American development bank; we will work with the BRICS [New Development Bank] bank.”

Both Guedes and Rodrigues believe that Guyana will be the “new Dubai of the hemisphere” having found significant quantities of light, sweet crude offshore with more oil blocks to be explored. The Economy Minister projected a sense of optimism stating that Brazil will pursue road, port and energy collaboration.

“We want to bring all the resources to make these transcontinental infrastructures possible, we want gas from Bolivia, we want gas from Argentina; we would like to participate in the shock of cheap energy. We want the Boa Vista-Georgetown road; we want to do this together. We want this road, we will support. We will take this funding internationally. This will lead to another route to the Atlantic and if you go left you route to Asia,” he said.

For decades, both Guyana and Brazil envisaged a route through Guyana, which will provide better development prospects for investors to come from the Caribbean into Brazil and from Brazil into the Caribbean. In fact, in some parts of the Rupununi, roads were actually aligned but, at the time, there was no funding to complete them.

Minister Guedes hopes that the road will facilitate the passage of the free trade zone of Manaus through the route. This was established in 1967 to promote the development of Brazil’s inner Amazon region, by establishing an industrial, commercial and agricultural hub. Meanwhile, he envisions oil and energy collaboration.

He committed to the Roraima Senator: “We are together with you in this Roraima project and I always say this is going to have 100 per cent support from the Government of Brazil.