Latest update May 16th, 2026 12:35 AM
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Questionable investments
Something must be horribly wrong with Guyana and its forward planning. When it plans ahead it arrives at certain conclusions which when examined, seem to be worth the time and energy put into the programme. Sometimes, the undertaking involves large sums of money.
For example, for decades the people in Guyana were accustomed to travelling by boat to Linden, at the time the leading bauxite community in Guyana. That trip lasted some twelve hours but the people were accustomed to it. The government decided that the community and the country could be better served if there was a road linking the two communities and sought foreign funding to construct such a road.
Today that road has seen the rapid expansion and development of Linden largely because it exposed the town to more people since the trip to the mining community was just over an hour.
It was the same with the Demerara Harbour Bridge and the Berbice River Bridge. Travelling from Berbice to the city was a veritable nightmare. For one, people had to leave their homes at odd hours and even when they reached the stelling; it could be hours before they were allowed to cross. When one considers that the river is not three kilometers wide then one must agonise over the fact that they could sit and wait for as long as four hours to make that crossing.
The Demerara Harbour Bridge was equally a move that represented money well spent. Today hundreds of vehicles cross that bridge every day. And to further support its importance, the bridge had allowed the government to create housing schemes that now house thousands of people. These schemes have eased the pressure on an already overcrowded capital city.
But there are other areas of expenditure that only serve to invoke anger in the population. One such entity that simply gobbles up money without providing the desired change is Guyana Power and Light. It goes without saying that this entity is the larger consumer of foreign exchange by way of the fuel it requires for its operation.
None can fault this expenditure but there have been other expenditures that were designed to enhance the operation of the power company. For starters, taxpayers funded the rental of Caterpillar engines to supplement the ailing turbines. But despite these turbines power outages continued.
Then the government took the bull by the horns and spent a huge sum—some US$30 million—to construct a generating station. At the commissioning of that station, Prime Minister Sam Hinds who has responsibility for the power sector, announced to the world that the days of blackouts were over. No sooner had the words left his mouth than blackouts continued.
The government then set about constructing another power station and one thought that with two new turbines the power situation would have been constant. This is not to be and one is left to wonder at the expenditures and loans to the power sector.
The most scandalous of the lot is the new Skeldon sugar factory. Up until the proposed construction of the Amaila Falls hydro project the Skeldon factory project represented the largest investment in the history of Guyana.
This factory was supposed to lower the cost of production, increase output and make Guyana’s sugar competitive on the world market in the wake of the price cuts by the European Union. Instead, this factory uses more cane to produce a tonne of sugar, experiences more downtime than its eighty-year-old predecessor and keeps gobbling up tax dollars to rectify problems that should not have existed at this time of its life.
Recently, when the nation looked at the amount of money it keeps pouring into the Skeldon factory it began to ask questions. The government says that it has spent too much to quit now. But the political opposition feels that the time has come to say enough is enough.
Of course it would not make sense to scrap a project for which one would be paying ad infinitum but the time has come when one must question the ability of the decision-makers to conceptualise worthwhile projects.
There are some new projects underway and now is the best time to examine these projects.
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