US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio began his Caribbean tour in Jamaica today, where he met and held discussions with the Jamaican Government and separately with other CARICOM leaders.
Mr. Rubio will be in Guyana on Thursday for meetings with President Irfaan Ali and Government officials on several key areas.
In Jamaica today, the discussions focused heavily on trade, security cooperation, and foreign aid.
On the issue of US foreign aid and the new stance of the US administration which has been slashing foreign aid, the US Secretary of State explained that the US is not getting out of the business of foreign aid, but instead will be focusing now on ensuring its foreign aid aligns with its foreign policy.
“The United States is not getting out of the aid business. We are going to be providing foreign aid. The difference is we want to provide foreign aid in a way that is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and the priorities of our host countries and our nation states that we’re partners with. In essence, how that would work, how it has worked in the past is USAID or some other entity would come into a country and say this is what we think you need. And then they go out and hire an NGO that maybe are the ones that convinced them that that’s what you need, and they give them a bunch of money and they come into the country and they do things. Some of these programmes are fine. They’re nice things. Other times, not so much. Nonetheless, that’s how it used to be. How we want to be in the future is that our Embassies are involved with the host Government, our hosts, our partners, and we ask them, what are your needs and we provide assistance geared towards the needs of the nation states that are hosting us and that we’re partnering with”, Rubio said.
According to the US Secretary of State, the host Governments are in the best position to speak to the needs of the country and that’s where the partnership will be.
He said “it’s the host Government who have a clear vision for the future and to the extent that our foreign aid can be helpful, it is in furtherance of what the people of your country have elected you to carry out. Here there are a lot of things you’ve just described some of them. What should our foreign native gear towards? It should be geared towards looking for opportunities to increase skills training, looking for opportunities to attract an investment in business, and trade and looking, obviously for opportunities to expand on your own domestic intelligence capabilities. We are going to have foreign aid that is aligned to our foreign policy and our foreign policy is going to be aligned to our mutual shared interests”.
The Donald Trump administration has slashed the staff of USAID across the world, hampering a number of projects in various countries.
In Guyana, at least one major project has been affected and the others have been left pending.
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