Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 06, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The question of nationalization of the Berbice River Bridge does not arise. There is no need for the government to be taking hundreds of millions of dollars to have returned to the people of Guyana what has been handed by the very government to private shareholders.
The Berbice River Bridge belongs substantially to the people of this country. The government is supposed to have a seventy per cent stake in the shares of the Bridge Company having funded more than 90% of the overall investment in the bridge and access roads. Yet they have sinisterly surrendered control of the Board which this seventy per cent shareholding would have acquired. They have allowed shareholders with a minority interest on the Board to have control of the Board. Imagine a company with multiple times less investment in the bridge than the government having twice as many Directors on the Board as the government?
How can any right-thinking administration turn over control of the Board to private minority shareholders? This is tantamount to surrendering your interest in the bridge company, because if with 70% shareholding you do not have a majority on the Board then you are at the whims of the other directors. They can make whatever decisions they want and there is nothing that you the majority shareholder can do.
The corollary is that of a man who puts 90% of the funds to start a business, but is not interested in having the most persons on the Board of Directors of the entity. Or it is like the opposition, which has a majority of seats in the National Assembly, telling the PPP to take over 50% of the total seats.
The directors representing the private investors in the Berbice River Bridge do not have to worry about buying out the shares of the government. Why bother about that when the bridge is effectively theirs? It is almost as if they have been gifted the 70% shares of the government because with no control over the Board, it means that the 30% shareholders effectively decide what happens and what does not happen. For 30% shares in the bridge they have therefore constructively assumed ownership of the bridge.
This is also what is likely to play out with the Marriott Hotel. For a 13% investment in the project, a select investor will have controlling interest. That is beyond recklessness. That is effectively taking national assets and handing it over to the private sector for nothing. Then on top of that the dividends that are supposed to be collected for the bridge will be waived, which means that all the profits will go to private shareholders.
That is not just profiteering. It is racketeering.
The people of Guyana need to demand that the Berbice River Bridge is returned to this country. We should not be moving in the direction of nationalization because 70% of the shares of the bridge belong to the people of this country and it must be returned to them forthwith.
The private sector of Guyana should be ashamed of what has happened here. The private sector should be in the forefront of demanding that the Berbice River Bridge, which has been handed over by the government to minority shareholders, be returned to the people of Guyana by the State assuming majority representation on the Board of Directors.
Why should the people of Guyana have to buy out the minority shareholders after these shareholders have enjoyed the dividends that were rightly supposed to be paid to the government? Why should there be a buyout after there has been a sellout?
Who benefits from a buyout of the private investors? The main beneficiaries will be the private investors, because for a $300M investment they will ask for $600M and will end up smiling all the way to the bank.
What has happened with the Berbice River Bridge is totally unacceptable and this matter should be internationalized, because it seems as if the opposition in Guyana is unwilling to demand that steps be taken to retrieve the government’s control of the bridge.
The opposition should take steps to have parliament debate this terrible fate that has befallen the people’s interest in the Berbice River Bridge, and after that debate if no action is taken, the opposition should move towards a motion of no confidence so as to force fresh elections.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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