GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The Guyana government has no immediate plans to facilitate or regulate cryptocurrency transactions, despite having studied the matter, according to Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo.
Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo speaking at the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo.“The answer is no. Not at this time. We have been exploring it. We have been studying this,” he stated while responding to a question at the just-ended Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo at the Guyana Marriott in Kingston.
While cryptocurrency remains off the table for now, Jagdeo acknowledged that the Central Bank has conducted studies on its potential implementation. However, he stressed that major financial reforms must come first.
“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,” he explained, adding that without modernization, the financial sector could slow down Guyana’s economic growth.
“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.”
Jagdeo left the door open for future cryptocurrency adoption, provided that Guyana’s financial system evolves and proper safeguards are in place.
“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,” he said.
In the meantime, the vice president told those attending the expo which was themed ‘Connecting the Dots: Integrating the Future’, that the government’s current focus is on modernizing key sectors, including national security and public administration.
“Right now, we are doing several projects. We are digitizing 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,” he said.
Jagdeo added that the government has already started implementing nationwide surveillance systems.
“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,” he said.
