More overseas-based Guyanese returning home

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Ambassador Elizabeth Harper

A Guyanese diplomat says more Guyanese living in various countries in North America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world are now showing an interest in returning to their country of birth.
Guyana’s Ambassador to Caricom and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Harper says an improvement in the economy has attracted more nationals to return home. “We are seeing a lot of our nationals coming back home who are not just retirees but people in their mid-thirties, forties who  have lived abroad for some time and who have re-migrated and are opening up businesses and tapping into the country’s resources…obviously the economic growth is picking up,” she said.
Ambassador Harper and a delegation from Guyana will be making a pitch for Guyanese to return to their country to aid in its development. Guyana is known to have a high migration rate.
Ambassador Harper says the first order of business would be to garner a bank of skill sets available amongst the Guyanese population. “The first thing that we are trying to do is to collect the data of what our diaspora has out there…the skills that they might have, their interests in a particular area and when we are able to get that data and assess it, then we have to do the parallel exercise to make sure that we can match those interests, match the skills with the gaps in the public and private sectors,” she added.
Guyana and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) recently launched a project to tap into the wealth of expertise and other resources of the large Guyanese Diaspora.

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