Latest update May 6th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 11, 2016 AFC Column, Features / Columnists
These past few weeks the public discussions led by the Opposition have featured some deliberately misleading, disingenuous commentary, not on any demerits of Budget 2017, but on one single element – taxes. This prickly
subject of price increases for any consumable, be it gas or bread, anywhere in the world, always gives rise to public dissent. It’s normal in the natural human order. But our government did present a Budget containing numerous programmes and projects that will benefit the people of this country in the short, medium and long term.
In the Opposition-led discourses, we have heard not one word about the concrete plans to build a permanent fixed bridge across the Essequibo River; to finally plan to desilt the Demerara River Navigational Channel in 2017 which our shipping companies have been begging for, for decades; about the soon-to-be constructed overpasses for both pedestrians and vehicles at several points between Georgetown and Diamond, EBD.
No one has mentioned the long overdue upgrade of the Linden to Mabura road which is the first stage of the Linden/Lethem corridor. This corridor is truly the gateway to our hinterland where miners, foresters, wildlife specialists, service providers conduct their various businesses, and where a few thousand people live and work.
This corridor is also the one that will facilitate the construction of several hydropower stations, and the expected boom in economic activities between Guyana and our neighbour Brazil. This too has been on the private sector’s agenda before 2010 and it was presented to the government then!
It was the Private sector who initiated the interventions with the governments of a few Brazilian states in the north like Roraima and the Amazonas. The business communities on both sides of the border had participated in exchange visits, and they all were able to see first-hand the businesses and services – Guyana’s and Brazil’s.
The main plan, conceived in 2010, was to build an Economic Free Trade Zone in the border town of Lethem. There the Brazilians would have constructed silos and the accompanying facilities to store their soya and black beans, corn and other agricultural products that they grow. Then they would utilize Guyana’s network of roads and rivers to transport their grains to Port Georgetown from where it would be shipped via the Atlantic Ocean to their markets around the world.
Why Guyana, you ask. Check out the map of Brazil. You’ll see that these Brazilian states are situated below and to the west of our Rupununi region. It would cost the Brazilian exporters much less to transport their cargo through Guyana to our Atlantic port, than it generally costs them to ferry their cargo down the Amazon River or over their land to reach their own ports, even the Port of Santos near Sao Paolo.
Brazil had proposed some generous economic interventions in Guyana which included paving the Linden/Lethem corridor, and constructing one or more multi-megawatt hydropower plants in the Essequibo region at no cost to Guyana. The plan was to provide Guyana with the megawattage that we require which hardly passes the 300 mark, and send the rest to the Northern States of Brazil. The only task Guyana had was to construct the transmission line and install the necessary facilities between the interior hydro stations and the control facilities in Georgetown.
And what did our government do in 2010? They tossed away the Brazilian plans because they preferred to spend YOUR hard-earned tax dollars to develop and build the Amaila Falls Hydro station at mind-blowing prices. We all had to watch on while the hapless ‘Fip’ Motilall consistently drove the costs up month after incredulous month. Then we found out that the Amaila River runs dry at a particular time of year. It just made no economic sense, but like the proverbial dog with a bone, the PPP government adamantly refused to re-examine Jagdeo’s money-making ‘low carbon’ pet project for its economic feasibility.
But we digressed. So, the ‘discussions’ being driven by the Opposition include not a single mention of the innovative project to develop a real Boardwalk along the Georgetown seawall, a venture that will create business for small scale entrepreneurs; it will create employment; it will provide tourists who come to Guyana looking for adventure with new experiences, and for returning Guyanese, it provides a place they will be proud to encourage their associates in their adopted countries to see.
We expect the Opposition to find issue with that too, but they are really fixated on the taxes they will finally have to pay, and prefer to indulge in unsupportable scare tactics.
Guyanese have been hearing about the “Sea of Potential” that is Guyana for many decades. We all have been hoping this would be realized in our lifetime. Finally, this government is making it happen! If you use ‘delivery of that potential’ as the yard stick, you will see that this nation has been comatose for the last two decades and three years. Not many tangibles were accomplished except for the Berbice Bridge and the Hope Canal Sluice (partially). Happily, we have turned things around and now there are real projects for our people to participate in and earn.
Quite understandably, every citizen wants Guyana to change right now, today. Everyone wants to put that depressing era of beaten-down oppression behind us. It is not unreasonable that our people want to see the promised changes realized right now, and it not so unreasonable that you have become discouraged that a few of the promises made 18 months ago have had to wait to be fulfilled while we fixed the broken parts of the financial systems, the public service, the process to award contracts, and these are just a few.
We have had to pass enabling legislation to allow the benefits we promised to come to life. But they are coming to life!
(To be continued with e-commerce, telemedicine, on-line education, etc.)
GRA catch EXXON trying to hunch GUYANA over 11 BUS dollars in one shot!!!!
May 06, 2024
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