Guyana is an island surrounded by land

Extracted Form: http://guyanaforestry.blogspot.com/2007/03/guyana-is-island-surrounded-by-land.html


A different vision of development
Friday, March 2nd 2007

"Guyana is an island surrounded by land". Recent public references to the development of Guyana remind one of this statement. The prospect of large casino hotels being built near and in Georgetown has excited many Guyanese, not least President Jagdeo.

The recent erection of many large buildings in the city and along the Coast by private persons is a phenomenon much discussed among Guyanese, and clearly there are more to come.

Whatever its source of investment, contrast this coastal building development with the interior of Guyana. Compare Bon Fin with Lethem, for instance.

Or, to give another example, compare President Jagdeo's statement at the opening of Buddy's International hotel last week with his response at a media briefing in September last year concerning the prospect of paving the road from Linden to Lethem to link up with the new Takutu bridge on the border of Guyana and Brazil.

At the opening of the new international hotel he is reported as saying, in praising the enterprise, determination and vision of its owner:-

"Over the past two years I have come to realize what I have always suspected, that in our country we have two generations of people, and these people do not get classified into one generation or the other based on their age - that has nothing to do with the chronology of life, but it has to do with attitudes." ……. "There is a generation which has buzz words like 'don't, cannot, should not, why should we'...and the other generation speaks about 'we must, we have to, we must try, we have to find a way', and if we are going to develop, we need to move more persons into the latter generation because for a very long time, the 'don't do' generation has stifled this country and they have made us feel inferior and they find everything about ourselves bad and anything foreign superior," the President said.

He stressed that this attitude "must change" and that Buddy's hotel is a "contribution to that positive change."

In September 2006, when asked at a media briefing about plans for paving the Lethem to Linden road and the construction of a bridge over the Kurupukari, he had this to say, as reported in Stabroek News of September 2006:-

"Asked at a media briefing about plans for paving the road from Lethem to Linden and the construction of a bridge over the Essequibo River at the Kurupukari Crossing, Jagdeo told the media on Tuesday that one could not spend millions of dollars on infrastructure when the rate of return per year is very minimal.

"You can't spend US$200 million on paving a road that earns you US$500,000 a year. Normally the rate of return should be about 10% so you have to earn about US$20 million a year and that is at the low end to justify that if government is financing it," he said.

While the government might be looking at an annual 10% rate of return on the investment, he said, if the private sector were to finance the paving of the road they would be looking at an annual rate of return close to 25%.

He said that when he looks at the traffic flow on that road he prefers "to keep my money in the bank." However, he said, if the development of the road could be linked to bigger projects such as exporting or bringing soya products or goods from the free trade area of Manaus or it is linked to the plans for the development of Northern Brazil then it becomes feasible.

He said there was no immediate plan to build a bridge at the Kurupukari Crossing."

The Government has been the recipient of approaches from Brazilian investors, encouraged by Mr. Paul Hardy who is an ardent advocate of a paved road through the interior of Guyana to Brazil to connect to the excellent Brazilian highway system from Bon Fin on the Takutu through Boa Vista to Manaus on the Amazon/Rio Negro. This is what Mr. Hardy had to say to Stabroek News in April last year:-

"The business community in Brazil is willing to pave the road from Lethem to connect to Georgetown and build the bridges along the route including one at Kurupukari across the Essequibo River in exchange for timber and mining concessions, GAP Leader Paul Hardy said.

In a recent interview, Hardy told Stabroek News that the Brazilian private sector had indicated its willingness during a recent meeting in Boa Vista. The businessmen were now working on a plan, which they hoped to present to the Guyana government, he said ….. Let us use it to that advantage and we don't depend on government's funding. Because we are a HIPC nation we cannot accept a loan. The groups are willing to come to Guyana if proper lobbying is done. We promise to lobby our government for that project to come through.

"Where would the bridge lead to once you drive off at Lethem?" he asked. "Once you get across the Takutu Bridge in Brazil you drive right through Brazil on good paved highways… [at] the Guyana end you drive off the bridge onto some rough laterite road. There is no infrastructure in place at Lethem."

Hardy said the construction of the bridge has to be an integrated project. Brazilian critics of the southern link, he said, were saying that Guyanese cannot even build a proper road and they want a bridge. "What's the use of building a bridge and we can't build a road. It has to be an integrated project and the road and deep water harbour have to be part of it," he said."

The Sunday Chronicle of 24th September 2006 contained an article by Guyana's Ambassador Mr. Odeen Ishmael referring to the process entitled "Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America" (IIRSA). Ambassador Ishmael stated:-

"A road link between Cuidad Bolivar in eastern Venezuela and Linden via Bartica, including river bridges, and the completion of the Takutu Bridge and the road link from there to Georgetown are listed as already approved IIRSA projects."

It is clear from the reports from time to time of investor interest and proposals concerning an interior road to Brazil that there have been enough initial opportunities for a government that is truly committed to the development of the interior as an overriding priority to respond to creatively.

One must not make too much of a contrast between the cautious Presidential response concerning the interior road and the verbal hubris associated with the opening of the hotel on time for the Cricket World Cup. And a road through the interior to Brazil has been an idea based on feasibility studies for over four decades. The matter has been on the post-war agenda since the first feasibility study in 1961 and the Highways to Happiness manifesto of the early United Force in the 1960s which spoke of a network of roads opening up and connecting different parts of the country.

But, had a member of the opposition made a statement concerning Buddy's International Hotel similar to the President's statement in September last year on the interior road, questioning the likely return on such an investment, the words used by President Jagdeo last week and quoted above would probably have been applied to him in spades.

Clearly, strategic decisions have to be made, taking into consideration limited state resources, available investment models, and not least, the slumbering tiger of Venezuela's claim to Essequibo.

But that is what all real national development is about. Our development strategy, once it moves beyond our coastal "island", will drive our foreign relations as well as our internal economic choices.

For instance, given the clear interest expressed by Brazilian investors, supported by the Brazilian and state governments, in a road through Guyana from the Takutu to a deep water port accessing the Southern Caribbean trade routes, should we be making ourselves more economically dependent on Venezuelan oil credits?

And, given the seriousness of the decisions that have to be taken, should the government be putting the Cricket World Cup before discussions with the opposition in parliament about cooperation?

In November 2005 the Prime Minister, performing the functions of President, told an IIRSA workshop that "the success of the Guyana/Brazil road project would open doors to a wide range of entrepreneurs in the region," and referred to "a deep water harbour that would allow larger volumes of products from Brazil to get to the Caribbean and beyond and for regional products to reach Brazil's northern states and further afield."

The official inter-country protocols that would facilitate a two-way traffic flow over the new Takutu bridge are well advanced and in some cases completed. But the Takutu bridge is a means, not an end. To quote Mr. Hardy "where would the bridge lead to once you drive off at Lethem?" And what has happened at government level to all the proposals, projects and statements of interest and hope?

The Rio Group of countries have long embarked on a new and different approach to development. This new approach brings together creative financing, isolated geographic regions, neglected communities and under-utilised natural resources. No longer is financing by the State the main input for undertaking big infrastructural projects.

Attention is paid to the goal of social, political, economic and environmental sustainability by providing concrete improvements in the quality of life of the population at large, by achieving efficiency and competitiveness in all related productive processes and by utilising natural resources while protecting the ecological heritage for future generations.

The principal vehicle for implementing this process is called Build-Operate Transfer (BOT). It's an imaginative form of financing where a private entity receives a franchise from the State to finance, design, construct, and operate a facility for a specified period, after which ownership is transferred back to the State. During the time when the entity operates the facility, it is allowed to charge appropriate tolls, rentals, and charges stated in its contract that enables recovery of investment and operating and maintenance expenses.

Many countries such as Brazil, Chile and Argentina, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong use BOT for their major infrastructural road-building and other projects. More recently, in our own region Jamaica has used the BOT model for projects in rural water supply, upgrading the Donald Sangster Airport and for the largest construction project ever undertaken on the island, a 230 km tolled expressway.

Why are these approaches relevant to us at this time? Because for fifty-odd years we've been trying, with little success, to effectively grapple with problems of growth, development and making the best of our underutilized hinterland resources.

Why is there no national (not bureaucratic) agenda on this vital issue, involving the legitimate private sector and the parliamentary opposition as well as the government?

Is the national development vision of our government exhausted by two casino hotels and a conference centre?

One reason may be that there is another prospect presented by real development of the hinterland. It is unlikely that the crab-in-the-barrel, beggar-thy-neighbour politics of the coast - the ethnic political priorities to "getting in" and "keeping the other side out" - can survive a substantial growth of population in the interior.

Different popular perspectives may develop, some of which may make our present political leaders uncomfortable. Private enterprise driven infrastructural development and new settlements in the interior of Guyana cannot be confined within the parameters of our present party political culture, or of a highly centralized decision making governmental process in which all decisions, large or small, depend on or can be reversed by the nod of one person.

Our political leaders may well consider it "safer" to concentrate on quick-impact development schemes on the coast that impress voters.

But, "safer" for whom?

StabroekNews