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Energy Dept aims at capacity building … to meet local content demands
Energy Director Mark Bynoe has contended that blanket quotas for participation by local service providers and suppliers in the oil sector, and strict penalties for non-compliance to Guyana’s local content policy, are not enough to ensure locals can actively participate in the sector and glean value for themselves.
He said that the Government is working to ensure, as adumbrated in the yet to be released policy document, that there is sufficient capacity building, knowledge transfers, efficiency promotion and technological enhancement.
Energy Director, Dr. Mark Bynoe
The Energy Director explained the Department’s approach during an address at an awards dinner hosted by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), on Wednesday evening at the Pegasus Hotel.
Dr. Bynoe said that Guyanese have been benefitting from technical training, and that Esso Exploration and Production Limited (EEPGL) has been working with the Council for Technical & Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), and the Board of Industrial Training to conduct third party assessments of laboratories and various TVET institutions. EEPGL is reportedly assisting to rehabilitate labs and reviewing the curriculum offered by those institutions for industry readiness.
The company is also reportedly in discussions with Government to establish a small and micro financing facility for small, indigenous business to build their capacity.
The Energy Director said that for some time, public discussion on local content tended to assume that locals already have the capabilities the oil sector needs, while suffering from a bias against them by foreign companies.
He added that while those discussions would focus on legislative mandates that strictly separate the definitions of indigenous companies from others (with identifiers such as place of incorporation or identity of shareholders), more benefit would come from involving the creation and improvement of basic, managerial technical and operational skills, and the development of vocational training programmes.
The Energy Director said that the policy in the Energy Department’s possession will have to be viewed in light of broader obstacles to Guyanese participation in economic activity, like the country’s poor ease of doing business ranking and its struggling educational standards.
To this end, Dr. Bynoe is advocating for an inter-ministerial approach to improve access to education, with the help of the ministries whose sectors are set to benefit from Guyana’s oil boom.
Dr. Bynoe said that the local content approach adopted and the measures it adumbrates will seek to plug the gaps that form barriers to participating in economic activity, instead of “trying to create a one-for-all approach by mandating minimum quotas, for example, for domestic employment obligations and training budgets”.
He said that the administration of the policy will be overseen by a series of public institutions that, by virtue of that additional mandate, will need to be empowered in terms of expertise and budgetary resources, due to the resource intensive nature of the task.
The Local Content Policy now in its fourth draft, has been submitted to the Energy Department by the Consultant, Dr. Michael Warner.
It is expected to be released to the public before month-end.
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