For the first time in 56 years, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his first trip to Guyana on Wednesday.
President Irfaan Ali and over a dozen cabinet colleagues welcomed Modi. Modi will attend the second India-CARICOM Summit following the G20 Summit in Brazil. In addition, he will meet with the Indian diaspora, which makes up around 40% of the population of Guyana, and speak to the National Assembly.
In 1968, while serving as Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi traveled to Guyana. S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, traveled to Guyana and three other Latin American nations in April 2023: the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Colombia. He is the first Indian foreign minister to visit these countries on a bilateral basis.
Outreach to Guyana
India has greatly increased its interaction with Guyana in recent years. About 30,000 indigenous tribes received solar illumination from it, and it furnished two HAL-228 aircraft under a line of credit.
Up to 800 Guyanese, including President Ali, have graduated from the Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) capacity-building program, Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC).
India is reaching out to Guyana because of its enormous economic potential. Guyana’s economy rose by 62.3% in 2022, the highest real GDP growth in the world during that year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Following the recent discovery of oil reserves, Guyana has emerged as a major global supplier of crude oil.
India spent around $132.4 billion on fuel imports in 2023–2024, as its reliance on crude oil imports increased by 87.7%. Guyana’s abundant oil reserves present an opportunity for New Delhi, especially in terms of diversifying its fossil fuel trade.
“Guyana is, as you know, on the cusp of an economic and developmental transformation with major oil and gas discovery,” the MEA acknowledged. We intend to collaborate with them in a variety of areas, including hydrocarbons. We will have the chance to collaborate with them in a variety of areas because their economy is expanding at the quickest rate in the globe.
Last Frontier to Strategic priority
Due to the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon, the Latin American region was long seen as India’s “last frontier” in terms of foreign policy. According to international affairs specialist Hari Seshasayee, the Minister of State for External Affairs oversaw the Latin American region during the majority of the twenty-first century.
But after Jaishankar became leadership of the ministry, things drastically changed. To date, he has visited eight countries in Latin America on a bilateral basis. In 2021, he traveled to Mexico; in 2022, he traveled to Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; and in 2023, he traveled to Panama, Guyana, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
PM Modi has visited the region five times since 2014, including Guyana. During their 2023 G20 leadership, India welcomed five countries from Latin America.
The Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Barbados have chosen to bestow their highest national honor on PM Modi in recognition of India’s assistance in their growth. In their fight against the epidemic, the Dominican government referred to India’s decision to supply Covid vaccinations as a “generous gift.”
Increase in trade
India’s trade with Latin American nations has skyrocketed in the past 20 years, from $1.6 billion in 2000 to over $43 billion in 2024. Its total exports to Brazil ($6,022 million) is higher than that to the traditional partners such as Japan ($5,156 million), Indonesia ($5,988 million), Vietnam (Rs 5,470 million) and Thailand ($5,038 million).
Vehicles, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals are among India’s top exports; its imports are mostly restricted to oil. IT-enabled services are another industry that is expanding in a promising way.
Seshasayee claims that Indian companies saw Latin America as a “goldilocks zone” that lies between the less competitive, lower-priced markets of Africa and the highly regulated, competitive markets of the US and Europe.
India has made about $17 billion in private investments in the area overall. The fact that Indian businesses generated thousands of jobs in value-added industries is still noteworthy, even though it is still little in comparison to China, which has an annual trade of about $450 billion with Latin American nations. Over 40,000 workers, mostly locals, are reportedly employed by IT companies alone.
PM Modi will co-chair the second India-CARICOM Summit, which will include 20 Caribbean nations, during the recent visit. India hopes to collaborate with them on a number of topics, including healthcare, renewable energy, technology, connectivity, and digital public infrastructure.
Until November 21, PM Modi will be in Guyana. After attending the G20 Summit, he is now in the final country of his three-nation tour.
