Impact on business sector

May 27, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – As expected, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) has come out to voice its anxieties. The PSC is concerned about the impact of Judge Sandil Kissoon’s ruling on the business community. The PSC is concerned about profits and the business community, which is its right. Meanwhile, this is a nation in which hundreds of thousands exist on or somewhere below the poverty line. One group making money hand over fist is focused on its continued prosperity, while many in the national community are fighting for survival.

When will there be an end to these savaging assaults on our senses? When will Guyanese of standing and substance come to appreciate the horrors of what is going on in this country with the people way below the middle rungs of the economic ladder, those close to the bottom? When will they pause from counting their own rich pickings and think of the people, of country, and not of their self-enriching, self-sustaining priorities?

We are told of the many tens of billions that ExxonMobil has invested here. What nobody is honest enough to reveal to the Guyanese public is that the American corporate superpower invests those billions to make many times as much from each billion brought here and put to work in our rich fields. ExxonMobil is not in a charity business, but one that assures it (Guyana is the best guarantee) of the sweetest, juiciest, richest returns. Since the company said that it has invested US$45 billion here, then it must be gracious enough to share with all Guyanese its reasons for the great resistance to Guyanese getting a few billions more in royalties, profits, and taxes. Here we have seasoned, astute businesspeople talking smartly about Foreign Direct Investment, and its stellar positives, but due to some curious handicap, they have not a word to say about the largest nongovernmental entity in the world not paying a single penny in taxes.

This is how self-serving our own Guyanese can be, with the well-positioned and flourishing PSC now taking it upon itself to express alarm about the impact of Judge Kissoon’s ruling. The PSC is on top of the world, and it does not want to see that world tampered with, nor does it care about that other world of Guyana that exists. It is where Guyanese cannot buy food, and parents cannot feed their children.

The PSC is far gone, now so far up ExxonMobil’s colon that it feels comfortable parroting what ExxonMobil’s President Routledge has been busy selling to any Guyanese who would give him a hearing. According to President Routledge, his ExxonMobil is ready “at any time to do the right thing.” We at this publication will now take President Routledge up on that: go ahead, do the right thing. Just do it!

Do what is the only right thing by Guyanese: let the contract be renegotiated and let Guyana get more so that the Guyanese people can be satisfied that they have been dealt with fairly…So that the same PSC that betrays its fellow Guyanese by standing on the side of ExxonMobil can prosper even more…So that there is no need for there to be all this trepidation about impact on the business sector.

It is a sad day, indeed, when the private sector so engrossed in its own profitable pursuits could be so cheap and so feeble as to be selling ExxonMobil’s lines. In so doing, the PSC has shown its hand most clearly and it is one that has a poisoned dagger against its own brethren. The PPP/C Government has sold out the people of Guyana. The PNCR and AFC have sold out Guyanese. Now, it is the turn of the PSC to join ranks with those who abandon the poor and struggling with their verbal schemes, their gaudy economic platitudes that fool only a few, and their self-promoting agendas that feather their own nests only.

The business sector has been visible and vibrant, and with that we are pleased. We would be more pleased to listen and learn from the business sector how much the interests of poor Guyanese matter to it, and a little less about what delights ExxonMobil and its President – Routledge.

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