A CHALLENGE FOR UNCLE DONALD

Dec 18, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Guyana Office for Investment (GOINVEST) does not need to become more proactive. It needs a shift in focus from being an organization that facilitates business to one that establishes business projects and then invite investors, both local and foreign, to come on board.
GOINVEST is always going to face huge challenges as long as it has to facilitate investments. Public officials protect their turf like security safeguarding the Crown Jewels.
The public sector operates within the old authoritarian tradition in which public officials feel that they are doing the public a favour when the public goes to them for services. As such even investors who are helping to keep the economy going are made to feel that they have to stoop to the whims and fancy of public officials.
There is no better demonstration of this than the discomfort that the public has to endure just to apply for a passport. Even though passport applicants are paying for their travel documents, they are made to feel as if they are institutionalized and if you dare try making a phone call while in the passport office, they are liable to be reprimanded or at worse lose their turn.
The passport office is not run as a business service. It is run like it was in the old days under an authoritarian culture. Very little has changed in twenty years.
It is the same elsewhere.  Many pensioners still face hassles at the NIS. Unless there are stronger systems to punish staff that do not provide timely service, the system will not get better.
If these are the tribulations that the public face when trying to access normal services, imagine what happens to investors who may require tax concessions, land, licenses and permits. This is why facilitating investment is always going to be a frustrating exercise.
Public officials know their authority and they do not easily yield that turf, at least not to any person representing an investment promoting agency.
To make the investment facilitation work better, the Head of GOINVEST has to have the ear of the President and when confronted with problems should be able to have direct presidential intervention. This however will politicize the investment facilitation process and defeat the objective of an institution-driven process.
It is easy to speak about institution- driven processes. But a precondition for such a process has to be changing the way Government offices operate. Over the past twenty years little has been done to create a new culture within the public sector, one that is business oriented and friendly rather than bureaucratic in nature.
If the government was serious about creating business- oriented public services, it would have by now changed the entire accounting system with the public service and made all government services more business friendly. It has failed to do so because politicians derive much of their power and pleasure from being in control and they exert a great deal of control through public officials. But these officials also have their own agenda and interests.
GOINVEST should minimize its investment facilitation focus. If investment is to be institution-driven, there will be no need for an agency like GOINVEST.
Investors would be confident that if they need land, tax concessions and permit what the rules for these are and they should feel confident that applications for these things would be speedily assessed and processed without having to offer any inducements.
There is however a more fundamental reason why GOINVEST should move away from investment facilitation towards investment creation. There is a need for jobs in Guyana. Jobs will improve the lives of Guyanese and investments are needed to generate many jobs such as garment factories and telemarketing services.
What GOINVEST should be doing is putting together business plans for large scale business operations that would employ large numbers of persons. It should then sell those proposals to investors in return for government backed tax rebates and incentives.
This is what GOINVEST should be doing. It should be putting together major investment deals that would create mass employment. The problem is that the sectors where these jobs can be created are already in the hands of friends of the business elite or these friends may already have plans for entry into the sector.
As such, there is bound to be some political resistance from others who are likely to compete with the friends of the political elite.
If the President is serious about GOINVEST becoming more proactive, he should allow them to immediately put together plans for five data centers, two communication service-providers and five clothing factories.
Is the President of Guyana willing to take this gamble?

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