An Indecent Assault On The Local Private Sector

Jul 28, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
Every country in the Caribbean takes pride in its hotels for the role they play in the local tourism industry, the backbone of its economy. Their industry has been built over many years of careful planning and execution.
One thing the governments of these countries have in common is that they provide the infrastructure, both physical and fiscal, to spur private initiative of both local and foreign investors to invest in hotels and other components of the hospitality industry.
None of these Governments use taxpayers’ money to build hotels for foreign companies and discriminate against local entrepreneurs. They encourage and support local hotels to refurbish, improve their standards, add rooms and build new hotels as the demand increases.
There is no better policy strategy at a national level than providing a stable, certain and attractive fiscal environment that attract investments to particular industries.
Governments building hotels using taxpayers’ money for leasing to foreign hotel chains is not the best use of taxpayers’ money. Guyana with its narrow economic base and poor infrastructure of roads, unreliable electricity, poor drainage, rising crime, and uncontrollable migration should not even be thinking of building hotels for wealthy multinationals.
Of more pressing need are clean water, reduced electricity rates, better health care, computers in schools for every secondary school child, a real highway to the airport, roads to the intermediate savannahs, and improved drainage in the city and the rest of our country.
I have raised the issue of the increasing evidence that the Government of Guyana is squeezing out the private sector by unfair competition.
I take serious offence with Mr. Jagdeo outburst, among other comments, on the quality of water at the Pegasus Hotel and condensation in the rooms in reaction to my comments of serious governance issues in his misuse of our tax dollars.
Let me remind the President that his Government has been a shareholder in the Pegasus from its inception. The primary responsibility for the supply of water to the nation rests with the Guyana Water Inc., a 100 per cent state-owned entity.
And is it not public knowledge that Pegasus is currently undergoing a US$8.0 upgrade that will bring this national forty-year old icon to the very best of international standards of comfort and hospitality?
Even as we do this no guest of the hotel had recently complained of room comfort or water quality.
The Pegasus enjoys the highest level of occupancy of all hotels in Guyana, averaging 55-60 per cent per annum compared with a national average of approximately 35 per cent.
If the demand for rooms increases we will mobilize the resources from local banks to add more rooms and expand facilities. It does not make economic sense to do so until then.
When we do so the entire economy benefits, including the banks as well as the national coffers. Why since the President feels that the Marriott will bring more tourists doesn’t he ask his private partners and the Marriott to do likewise and burrow money instead?
Maybe the proposed Marriott project is not really about tourism and quality of rooms but a disguised for just another of those projects which divert public resources to a few individuals.
Robert Badal
Chief Executive Officer
Pegasus

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