Sale of shares in Guyana telephone company to develop ICT sector

“We hope that the money that we can realize from this sale can go back to developing the ICT sector; that we can get more people access (to the internet)…We are trying to get more computers,” President Bharrat Jagdeo said this week. (Photo: un.org)

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, May 14, 2009 – The Guyana government plans to use the money from the sale of its 20 per cent stake in the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) Company to develop the country’s information communication technology (ICT) sector.

It had announced last week that it is no longer interested in holding on to the minority shareholding in the company that is owned by the United States-based Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN). It has offered ATN the option of buying the shares or they will be sold otherwise.

“We hope that the money that we can realize from this sale can go back to developing the ICT sector; that we can get more people access (to the internet)…We are trying to get more computers,” President Bharrat Jagdeo said this week.

He added that government will move to increase internet penetration within Guyana, by subsidizing the cost of internet bandwidth.

“If we can subsidize bandwidth to get more people connected to the internet…we’re hoping that over time we could have some 80,000 households connected to the internet,” Jagdeo indicated.

The Guyana President had previously committed to an ICT strategy.

A draft was created that aims to facilitate and ensure dramatic increases in social and economic wealth, and is geared at leveraging and enhancing Guyana’s human resources, innovation, education, infrastructure and information technology to accelerate economic and social development.