The Government has used this rice deal to unfairly transfer US$38M to a special interest group

Sep 02, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The Government is really something else. It is a sickening repository of filthy politricks and bad economics. They rush to parade everything as good when even a cursory examination reveals it is atrocious.
Take the paraded recent rice deal with Venezuela for example. The Government owes more than US$160 million to Venezuela. Venezuela wants rice in return for the debt it is owed. The Government gives it rice. But there is no money exchanged. The US$38 million is not real money. The Government never got a whiff of money nor will they ever. The deal is all on paper. It is paper exchange and nothing more. It means Venezuela simply reduced that US$160 million by US$38 million and Guyana now owes US$122 million to Venezuela. Not a blind cent came from the Venezuelan Government.
Understandably, the Government has to repay its debt but we got to US$160 million debt owing to Venezuela in the first place by mismanagement, waste and corruption.
Beyond the fuel we get from Venezuela there is a bigger problem afoot. For 18 years GPL has been leaking massively everywhere and wasting taxpayers’ money and the Government would not fix it. Instead, it rushes off to build a hydroelectric plant already started on a deplorable footing with US$15.4 million given to a fly-by-night road builder to feed electricity into a leaking broken system riddled with problems.
For 18 years this ‘white elephant’ has been the scene of reprehensible wrongdoings on the Guyanese people. Talk about the multiplication of waste. So there is where a large part of the US$160 million went – into waste, mismanagement and corruption. Now, this is a debt with interest rates driving it higher every single day for the past 18 years.
The Government decides to take a tangible product of the sweat, blood and tears of hardworking Guyanese farmers and give it to the Venezuelans in exchange for a debt that has been accumulating for 18 years and generating interest all the time. You take a fixed produced good and exchange it for an escalating liability without fixing the underlying problem with GPL and saving money on fuel imports in the first place.
This deal is the epitome of poor management and macabre fiscal practices. We know Venezuela did not give a single cent to Guyana in this deal. So the Government had to get this US$38 million from somewhere. It had to have borrowed it from somewhere or taken it from the taxes collected from all Guyanese. But the Government has guaranteed US$38 million to the rice farmers.
Minister Persaud states that under the deal suppliers will be paid prices approximately 75% more than those offered at other markets. What this means is this: the Government took US$38 million of taxpayers’ money or borrowed US$38 million and gave it to rice farmers.
They not only took the money of all Guyanese or created debts to be repaid by all Guyanese and gave it to rice farmers; they gave rice farmers a stunning deal.
The rice farmers got 75% more than any other group of rice farmers are being paid in any other market on the planet. The rice farmers could not have asked for a better Christmas present.
The rice farmers in Guyana got a massive US$28.5 million payoff by the PPP and its Government in this deal. But that is not all in this rotten fiasco. The rice farmers got another sweet enrichment earlier this year in another similar arrangement where they got a payoff of US$14.1 million on the backs of taxpayers.
Rice farmers are predominantly Indian-Guyanese and PPP supporters. They have been unfairly fattened at the expense of the general population in this deal.
This PPP Government has engaged in the illegal, unfair and discriminatory transfer of scarce state resources with this deal. Another small cabal of beneficiaries will buy new equipment, expand operations and buy new Prados and build new mansions investing unfairly obtained wealth into continuing this staggering divide of rich and poor in this nation. And the poor people working for them can’t get a salary increase.
When a small Guyanese contractor struggling to build his business has to compete with a foreigner who gets a US$15.4 million contract in questionable circumstances he can only pack up his belongings and point his compass northwards.
Every day swarms of Guyanese including Indians have given up on living in a PPP Guyana just like they did in a PNC Guyana. They likely will also in an AFC Guyana too. Every Guyanese pays taxes in this nation. That includes other special interest groups like miners and loggers and all ethnicities.
It is not just wrong and deplorable to transfer wealth in this manner it is downright morally criminal. So here we are again. Another day and another moral and ethical crime committed by the Government on the people.
When all Guyanese including Africans, Amerindians and Indians in this country pay taxes after unforgiving toil every single day they expect good competent government using that money literally drawn from their soul in fair efficient and proper ways. They don’t expect this sickening rape.
Michael Maxwell

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