Lack of Guidelines for Public Private Partnerships… You don’t need a fixed framework for everything – Jagdeo

Apr 11, 2017 News

---

Leader of the political Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo, reflected yesterday on comments made recently by Business Minister, Dominic Gaskin, as it relates to Public Private Partnerships.

At the recently held Heads of Mission Conference, Gaskin had revealed that there are no guidelines or framework which exists for governing the manner in which Public Private Partnerships are constructed to prevent any form of abuse or breach of law.
However, Jagdeo emphasized at his press conference held at his Church Street-based office that “not everything needs a fixed framework.”
In fact, Jagdeo shared that during the time of the People’s Progressive Party, they formulated their own prospectus for guiding individual Public Private Partnerships.
The former President said that there is a huge demand for Public Private Partnerships.
He said, “What the Minister needs to know is that you don’t need a fixed framework for everything. If the Minister is serious, he would look at an investment opportunity, where they need a public private partnership.”
Jagdeo added, “They will develop a prospectus, the prospectus will estimate the cost of the project; it will state the conditions under which Government will participate, the conditions under which the Private Sector will participate, what are the benefits to Private Sector being involved, like would they get a guaranteed rate of return on their investment or would they get a special tax break and then you advertise that.”
The government could have done 50 of these proposals by now. He noted that it is a simple thing to be done. He said that it is not a legislative framework that is needed in the National Assembly. The Opposition Leader stressed that it is just “ordinary work” to pursue Public Private Partnerships.
The former President said, “We had started this model; that’s why the Berbice Bridge was the one we started with. We developed a prospectus and we said we are going to offer investors a particular tax break, a return on their investment and we advertised it for people who are interested in putting their money in the project. You can go this route…”
During the Heads of Mission Conference last week, Gaskin said that many potential investors are looking for what are essentially public-private partnerships.
He said, however, that this is problematic because, “We don’t have a framework in place for public-private partnerships in Guyana. A lot of what is coming our way are unsolicited proposals that are only viable with the input of the government, or if government procures a particular service or protects a particular entity from competition.”

In many cases, Gaskin said that what is being proposed would violate the nation’s procurement laws. The Business Minister stressed that it is difficult and unwise to deal with such proposals outside of a framework, or without even some basic guidelines.
He said that until public-private partnership guidelines are put in place, the government should not be encouraging unsolicited proposals.
“It is important that we do this because the Government of Guyana will be looking for Public-Private Partnerships for certain projects. A lot of our infrastructure development over the next decade or more will need to be implemented through public-private partnerships.”
Gaskin also intimated that the country does not have the capacity, the expertise or the finances to accelerate Guyana’s infrastructure development without the resources of private investors.
“So we need them to be involved, but we need to control and regulate the process.”
Additionally, the Minister of Business disclosed that the reality facing the nation is that investors want to hear about the ease of doing business here; they want to hear about public security and the integrity of officials. But most of all, they want to hear about the investment projects that Guyana has to offer.
The Business Minister in this regard, said that unfortunately, Guyana really has none to offer for the time being.
Gaskin stated that in terms of investment promotion, GO-Invest is continuously trying to get the message out that Guyana is a good place to invest and that there are numerous investment opportunities in various sectors for which concessions are available.
He noted, however, that GO-Invest faces a similar challenge to what stakeholders in attendance are faced with in the area of investment promotion.
“Investors generally want to know what specific projects we have for them to invest in. And we have none. And therefore we tend to lose the interest of the investor because there are other countries competing for those limited investment funds that have tangible investment projects to offer.
“So the truth is that right now we’re not speaking a language that investors are looking to hear. So what is it that investors want to hear? You may have noticed that for the most part investors are looking for some kind of partnership with the government.
“That is their preference because it gives them the confidence and security they are looking for. This is especially so for foreign investors, including Diaspora investors.”
The Business Minister added, “Apart from that, investors are interested in political stability economic stability, rule of law, the integrity of Public Officials, physical Security and the ease of doing business. In these areas while we’re not high up in the ranking, we’re not that bad that investors will refuse to do business here.
“We just have a lot of work to do to improve the business environment so that we can gain an advantage over our competitors. As I said, the main problem is that investors are looking for specific projects to invest in and we have none. At least none that are ready to be presented to them.”
The Minister articulated that the Government is looking to develop a portfolio of investment projects which Go-Invest can promote to investors. He noted that this is something that his Ministry has started to work on.
He said, however, that like the national investment and export strategies, this is not going to be ready anytime soon.

---

---