THE government of Guyana has indicated that it is currently not exploring the idea of considering regulations that would facilitate regulations for cryptocurrency transactions.
This was made clear by Vice President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, saying, “The answer is no. Not at this time. We have been exploring it. We have been studying this.”
He was at the time responding to a question posed to him by a member of the audience during a question-and-answer segment on the first day of the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo, being held at the Guyana Marriott, Kingston.
The Vice President instead pointed to the fact that the current objective of the government is more focused on implementing modern solutions to various agencies which it sees as having a potential for widespread impact
“Right now, we are doing several projects. We are digitising the government. If you come into the airport now, you [will] see. We are hoping our airport, within the next few months [will] go paperless. We have started this year, mounting cameras right across the country. We started doing that with software for facial recognition. That would have a big impact on security,” the VP noted.
Dr Jagdeo did, however, seek to highlight that the government did not rule out the idea of implementing cryptocurrency without consideration.
“We have our hands filled. We had the central bank do some work on cryptocurrency and looking at its introduction, but I do not think [that] we are ready at this stage to go any further until we have done a major financial overhaul”, Dr Jagdeo said.
The reasoning behind this, Dr Jagdeo pointed out, was that the government believes that a complete modernisation and transformation of the financial sector can automatically promote growth and stability within all of the other sectors.
“We think that the financial sector can become a humbug, can slow down the massive growth that we are seeing in the real sector if it does not expand in complexity and instruments. That is why we are trying to drag it out of the stone ages into an environment that is appropriate to support the expansion in the real sector,” Dr Jagdeo underscored.
VP Jagdeo did however express that, “Once…we get to that level of complexity, then I think we can layer it on with things like crypto, provided the appropriate safeguards could be found and instituted.”
The Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo is being held under the theme: “Connecting the Dots: Integrating the Future” at the Guyana Marriott, Kingston from February 18-21 2025. (DPI)