Peeping Tom – The Public Interest

May 20, 2008 Peeping Tom

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I hope if and when the time comes for me to sell the property that I own, the Stabroek News will not try to dictate to whom I should sell it or for how much it should be sold.

I would be furious if they did raise the same maelstrom as they are doing now over the sale of Buddy’s International Hotel to a foreign investor.

No one is going to tell me at what price I should sell my property. The Stabroek News may have a right to ensure that before I sell, that all my taxes are paid, but for what price I sell is my bloody business and none of theirs.

I was appalled at the stance that newspaper is taking in relation to the sale of Buddy’s International Hotel. I thought they would have been pleased by the deal.

A new investor is taking over and he has promised to upgrade the already immaculate facility. Surely this fact that we will now have a five-star international hotel should be good news for the country. Surely the fact that Buddy’s is not going to become a white elephant should be pleasing.
After all, a great many businesses in this country were sold a fantasy about how Cricket World Cup 2007 would transform Guyana as we know it; how it would be non-stop business. Many persons like Buddy took a gamble and invested in the country. These investors are now counting their losses.
Now that Buddy has decided to sell, we are hearing a lot of adverse comments. The more the comments, however, the more it becomes clear that the issue is not so much about the sale as it is about Buddy.

We are hearing about the concessions offered and the expectation that the investor would have been there for the long haul. The Stabroek News however needs to be reminded that it originally took an antagonistic stance towards this investment and questioned the loan the government gave to the hotel. It is therefore bemusing that the said newspaper is now interested in the investor being there for the long haul.

I did not hear them say the same thing when OMAI sold its bauxite concessions to BOSAI. I did not hear them insist that they felt that OMAI should have been there for the long haul.

It does not matter. The long haul should be for the investment, not for the owners. Concessions are granted for investment, not because the State wants the owners to remain indefinitely. The world of business is today marked by mergers and sales with such frequency that you can hardly keep up.
This country would never have seen World Cup cricket had it not been for Buddy. Guyana needed a certain level of accommodation and needed it in close proximity to the Stadium. Without that investment Guyana would not have met the requirements to provide accommodation for the teams and top officials and the Guyana leg would therefore have been cancelled. This country therefore needs to applaud Buddy Shivraj for making the investment that he did. While the thousands of tourists that were promised are yet to materialize, at least today Guyanese have a top class hotel, an imposing and impressive edifice, to show off to visitors to this country.

If Buddy decides to sell his hotel that is his business. In fact the Stabroek News should be pleased that he sold it rather than it remaining there and becoming a white elephant and thus affecting the image of the country. They should be pleased that he sold it so that the public interest, the monies loaned to the hotel by the government, could be paid back. Or is it because they can no longer raise that red herring about the monies owed to the government that upsets them so much?

I do not know why the Stabroek News is so concerned about the sale price for the hotel. If a profit was made on the deal they should be glad, even though it is none of their business. A profit is better than a loss.

What the Stabroek News should be more concerned about is the giveaway deal that took place with the former Sanata Textile Mills complex.

This complex is public property, owned and paid for by the taxpayers of this country and therefore there is every justification in scrutinizing this deal to ensure that the public interest is safeguarded.
On Sunday the newspaper showed pictures of what they claimed was obsolete and vandalized equipment of the printing and dying factory. They also showed pictures of other sections of the facility after it was taken over by the new owners.

What they did not show were pictures of the facility before the takeover so that the public could have seen the size of this complex and the numerous buildings and facilities which have been leased for a pittance to an investor after a process that was not subject to an open bid.

I am not going to accept the fact that the Chinese left us junk when they departed. There was a public handing over ceremony and it is an insult to the Chinese for us to be now told that the equipment is now obsolete. Yet one year ago this was the very equipment for which bids were being invited. So what are we to believe, that the invitation was for investors to bid on obsolete equipment? In one year, this equipment became obsolete.

It was also claimed that it was the government that approached the investor after there were no responses to the original bids. The most transparent way of approaching investors is through a competitive bidding process and this was not done in the case of Sanata. I therefore again ask whether the public interest been served by the Sanata Deal?

These are far more important questions than those being raised about the sale of Buddy’s International Hotel.

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