India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi co-chairs the India-CARICOM Summit, in Georgetown, Guyana, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)

• Modi’s visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday he would share technology for combatting seaweed infestation with Caribbean nations, as he visited Guyana in the first such visit by an Indian leader in more than 50 years.
Guyana, a South American nation with many citizens of Indian origin, serves as headquarters for the 15-member Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom, and Modi met with regional leaders Wednesday as part of the India-Caricom summit. They last met in 2019.
Modi arrived with promises to help the region in areas including health, energy and agriculture. He also announced more than 1,000 scholarships over the next five years for trade bloc nations, mobile hospitals for rural areas and drug-testing laboratories as well as river and sea ferries for marine transport.
But Caribbean leaders reserved their loudest applause when Modi announced that India had made tremendous progress in converting large quantities of sargassum into fertilizer and other economic uses as he urged the region to take advantage of his offer.
“We are willing to share this with all the countries,” he said, calling the seaweed invasion on beaches in the tourism-dependent region “a very big problem.”
Modi also was thinking of home. Noting Guyana’s growing importance as an oil-producing nation after vast quantities of oil and gas were discovered off its coast in 2015, he said: “Guyana will play an important role in India’s energy security.”
He added that his government also is willing to fully equip at least one government building in each of the trade bloc nations with a solar power system.
Speaking after meeting with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, the country’s first Muslim leader, Modi promised to help Guyana and the region improve agriculture production, saying food security is important to island nations.
Trade between India and Guyana has strengthened in recent years, with India providing Guyana lines of credit for military passenger planes and funding to buy a fast river ferry that services far-flung jungle areas close to neighboring Venezuela.
Modi also noted that indentured laborers from India were brought to Guyana during the British colonial era and now make a significant contribution to the country. Nearly 40 percent of the population is East Indian.
Modi’s visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968.