Guyana has become a rich man’s country

Dec 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Guyana has a great deal of land. The government owns most of it and there is a hunger for it. People want land. Some want land to live on; others want land to farm on; there are those who want land for mining purposes and of course, there are those who want land simply because it is there and they can afford to have it.
A plot of land becomes to its owner his own piece of the world, his share of the planet, something that he can call his own.  Many work for their land. Many toil for years just to be able to own their own little crop of the woods. Others do not have to toil so hard.
They have money and resources, and sometimes friends to help them along the way. This is how the world works and because it works this way, there will continue to be controversies over the allocation of publicly owned land.
Governments in poor countries have to be careful that in selling public land that they do not enrich the rich further. The sale of public land should not be done to benefit any small clique. It should be done to generate benefits for Guyanese such as through the creation of jobs that will provide income for families.
Thus if there is a large piece of land available, the government should simply not divest it for the sake of divesting it. So long as the cost of maintaining that land is not onerous, the government need not be rushed into selling that land. What should direct any sale is the use to which the land is going to be put and who benefits.
It may also seem plausible for the government to insist on market rates for land. This ensures that the government gets the highest price.
But selling to the highest bidder may not be the right thing, for let us say that there is large tract of government land, that land would cost a fortune because it is not divided into smaller plots.
As such if it is sold en bloc, it means that only some rich person, someone who is already propertied can buy that land. It is inconceivable for any small man to bid market prices for any massive tract of land.
So in the end we have a transparent process, but one that cannot be fair since the small man does not have the resources to compete with the rich man whenever there is a bid sale. Where is the small man going to raise the hundreds of millions dollars to bid for large tracts of land in Guyana?
The rich man, however, can find the money, and when he does he will invest in that land and end up making many times what he invested. He then takes that money and buys more land, thus becoming richer and concentrating greater wealth in the hands of a few.
Guyana has always had a problem with wealth concentration.
The bulk of the economic land in Guyana is owned by a shrinking percentage of the population. This historical pattern of possession is continuing, and there is very little anyone can do about it because it is all legal and transparent.
When the government advertises a large tract of land for sale, it is being transparent. But is it doing the right thing knowing that only some rich person can buy that land; a rich person that may already have more money than he or she knows what to do with?
But why sell? Surely the government does not need the money that the sale will bring. It is not as, say, the sugar corporation, which is being forced to sell large acreages to the government in order to raise funds.
Why does the government need to sell land to private individuals when that very land could be devoted to public purposes? Why sell land that would end up making a great deal of money for a few private individuals when that same land can provide lots for thousands of additional poor families? Why allow the rich to benefit from the sale of public land when the same could have been done for the poor, or the land reserved for some public purpose such as holding ponds for water storage, given the concerns over climate change?
The same principle applies to the disposal of State-owned shares in the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company. These shares are being sold en bloc. Now, given the value of these shares, no poor person can afford to buy them. So why if it was necessary to sell these shares, was the portfolio not broken up into blocs of $20,000 shares and sold to the employees of the company? This would have ensured that at least the workers gained ownership of the shares.
But that is not happening. Instead what we have is the shares being placed on sale en bloc, and these no doubt can only be brought by the rich.
Guyana has become a rich man’s country. The poor instead of benefiting from the sale of public assets are looking on helplessly while the rich are buying up the country, expanding their reach, and no doubt within the next ten years, will end up owning most of Guyana.

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