National competitiveness hinges on passage of Anti-Money Laundering legislation

Feb 09, 2014 News

The 10-year work of the National Competitiveness Strategy Council to make the country attractive for foreign investment would be stymied if the National Assembly does not pass the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill.
This is according to Ramesh Dookhoo, Chairman of the Private Sector Commission’s Subcommittee on Trade at the first meeting of the Steering-committee of the National Competitive Strategy Council on Friday.

Ramesh Dookhoo, Chairman of the Private Sector Commission’s Subcommittee on Trade

One of the items discussed at the Steering-committee meeting was the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, which is in a Parliamentary Special Select Committee, while the country is blacklisted by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force.
He said that if the legislation is not passed in the National Assembly the operations and competitiveness of the business community would be tremendously impacted. Moreover, all the work done by the Council for the past 10 years to make Guyana attractive would go to waste.
Dookhoo said that the competitiveness of doing business in Guyana becomes irrelevant with Guyana’s blacklisting status. In addition, foreign investors would not be attracted to doing business in Guyana because of the high risk involved.
He explained that with the blacklisting status, the risk rating of the country goes up and therefore the money borrowed by the investor would attract a higher interest rate. As such, the foreign investor would look to other countries such as Suriname, Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago to do business.
The National Competitiveness Strategy Unit, by the request of the Government has developed a doing business action plan and report last year.
According to Tariq Williams, Project Manager of the National Competitiveness Strategy Unit (NCSU), the goal is to improve Guyana’s rating on the Doing Business Index by 30 places by 2015 with a series of reforms across the 10 pillars that constitute the doing business ranking.
He said, “The action plan was developed and we have recently gotten approval from the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) to include the implementation of the action plan under the support for the Competitive Programme 2014 work plan.”
Williams said that is a big step towards implementing the action plan. The Unit has started working with a consultant to fine tune the action plan in terms of timeline and costing, he added.
“We expect as soon as the fine tuning is done we will go to tender, and begin work on this initiative,” Williams said.
Another issue discussed by the Steering-committee was last year’s National Economic Forum.
According to Ronald Webster, Chairman of the Private Sector Commission, a number of issues came out of the National Economic Forum and the report is currently being summarized and would subsequently be released.
One of the main issues listed is Port Georgetown’s development and dredging. This would have an impact on the cost of services of goods and the private sector’s competitive ability in relation to exports.
According to Dookhoo, the development of Port Georgetown is a big and complicated issue for the private sector since it takes into consideration financing, and the rising cost of consumer goods if the port’s development is factored into the cost of cargo.
“In our budget talks with the Minister of Finance (Dr. Ashni Singh) recently, this took up a lot of our time,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the area of the customs warehouses the Council has been making process. He said that the large imports of cargo into Guyana have necessitated the expansion of warehousing facilities by the Customs Department. This has benefited the private sector by reducing the high demurrage charges accumulated at the wharfs for storage of goods.
“We are also in touch with the Minister of Finance… We had our first quarterly meeting with him to have the expeditious clearing of cargo in and out of Guyana. Those meetings were extremely productive,” Dookhoo said.