THE European Union (EU) envoy in Guyana has been facilitating talks for possible pharmaceutical production in Guyana.
This is according to European Union Ambassador to Guyana Rene Van Nes, during an interview with reporters on Thursday.
He said that this initiative is about seeing if Guyana, together with Barbados and Rwanda could play a role in pharmaceutical production.
Van Nes related that this is an interesting South-South operation. The EU, he said, assisted Rwanda to set up its own production facility for pharmaceuticals, which started with ‘COVID’ and the realisation that there was in Africa no production facility for ‘COVID’ vaccines.
“The EU said we can keep giving you vaccines, but it’s better to give you a factory, so can we bring in the European private sector,” Van Nes said, adding that with that, the EU would then be able to bring in financial institutions, along with the private sector to materialise this.
He then noted that currently, in Rwanda, they are now building a factory that will produce vaccines themselves.
Further to this, the ambassador said that a relationship was made between the President of Rwanda, the Prime Minister of Barbados and Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali.
He said that these leaders have begun talks on how to replicate this type of facility in Barbados and Guyana.
Van Nes said: “That is a very fascinating process, so we actually have people coming up and down… We have experts that already came to Guyana to look at the possibilities; of course, this is not the EU that is going to invest. What we want is to bring European companies to Guyana and Barbados to create here, production facilities in the pharmaceutical sector.”
This, he added, means that Guyana would have to look at its regulatory framework, investment environment, and the scientific ecosystem to facilitate same.
The ambassador related that the EU hopes that together with the government and experts, they would be able to create such an environment that would encourage the European private sector to invest in this sector.
When asked how soon Guyanese would be able to see this vision realised, Van Nes said that in working with the private sector, the EU is not in entire control of this, as the businesses or investors would be the ones making the decisions.
Van Nes went on to say that another mission will be coming to Guyana in the coming months, even as they are in constant contact with interested parties in Europe for this kind of venture.
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