Latest update January 15th, 2025 3:45 AM
Latest News
- Auditors given 5 months to audit Exxon’s US$19.6B expenditure
- Bar Association calls for immediate appointment of Chancellor and Chief Justice
- Gaza ceasefire ‘closer than ever’, Hamas says it is still awaiting Israeli maps
- Pigeons shut down Charlestown Secondary School
- One confirmed dead in Bartica bike accidents
Why are taxpayers continuing to subsidize Asian loggers?
Dear Editor,
Minister of Finance Winston Jordan paints a rosy picture of Malaysian transnational logger known locally as the Barama Company Limited. Having written its own foreign direct investment agreement in 1991, Barama has continued to draw maximum tax and other concessions from Guyana every year while promising much and invariably failing to deliver on its promises. The installed capacity of its second-hand plywood mill is 108 thousand cubic metres but since 2001 it has never exceeded 69 per cent of that capacity and for the last seven years it has been operating at 1/5 capacity or less while drawing 5/5 of tax concessions –
Meanwhile, Barama and Bai Shan Lin have been the leading Asian log exporters of our high-value timbers.
You have noted the labour disputes at DTL but you may have forgotten that Bai Shan Lin has been controlling DTL since 2007. So not only is Bai Shan Lin a persistent defaulter on investment promises but also a rotten employer.
Janette Bulkan
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Members of the National Assembly should exercise civility towards their peers
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- The following column was published two years ago in response to the same controversy that... more
Clarifying misconceptions about the Panama Canal
Sir Ronald Sanders (Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS) By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News–... more
Weekend Cartoon
