Without a Local Content Policy and legislation, Guyanese are fighting for crumbs that fall off the table

Aug 25, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,

It has been One Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty Five days since ExxonMobil announced the discovery of Oil in commercial quantities offshore Guyana. The APNU/AFC has not produced a final Local Content Policy to date, a draft is promised soon. No Local Content Legislation was drafted or introduced by the APNU/AFC in those 1555 days. For this reason alone, this collection of incompetents known as ‘The Coalition’ should never be re-elected, ever.
What exactly is Local Content? And what is it so important to all Guyanese? Practically Local content is the development of local skills, oil and gas technology transfer, and use of local manpower and local manufacturing, in other words building a workforce that is skilled and building a competitive supplier base. This is where Guyanese can benefit via the all important jobs and business opportunities that Oil brings with exploration and production. Without a Local Content Policy and enabling legislation, Guyanese are fighting for crumbs that fall off the big table.
APNU/AFC does not believe Local Content is important; the task was not treated as Priority One, it was left to Dr. Mark Bynoe, a part-time lecturer at the University of Guyana, with no know experience in the business world. Bynoe was not furnished with a large budget to hire experts globally, he was given a small budget and he plunked for Mr. Wilks, a retired oilman and DAI Global, a company already in the employ of ExxonMobil locally. This level of neglect may not attract a criminal charge, but it should.
Clues as to why Local Content has not garnered the serious attention it deserves are in the actions of the APNU/AFC; The structure of the National Resource Fund as passed (illegally) puts control of revenues in the hands of one man, a politician, whomever is the Minister of Finance would have an unhealthy control over every person associated with the management of these funds. APNU/AFC has passed legislation that has no effective checks and balances. Given the APNU/AFC track record of corruption, incompetence, jet-set lifestyles and incompetence, I cannot envisage a fund that grows; it will be more like the Gold reserves which have declined from $16.268 Billion in June 2015 to $589.3 Million today, a decline of 96.4%!
No doubt, Bynoe will respond to my charges of his incompetence with charts showing how many buckets of local KFC are consumed annually by the Oil; Bynoe may also list the all-expenses paid trip to Singapore from ExxonMobil as ‘local content’. The businessmen of Guyana know how badly APNU/AFC has failed them, now, you, the People, can judge for yourselves.
Respectfully
Robin Singh

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