Local content panel needs wider private sector representation

Local content panel needs wider private sector representation – GCCI Senior VP

Sep 26, 2020 News

– Govt urged to revisit private sector’s proposals for policy

Senior Vice President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Timothy Tucker has said that there is a need to broaden the representation of the private sector organizations on the Local Content Advisory Panel.

GCCI Senior Vice President, Timothy Tucker

Presently, the panel which was appointed by the Irfaan Ali administration just one month ago, is chaired by Shyam Nokta, who heads the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA). No other business service organization is represented.
At the time of making his comments, Tucker was participating in a GCCI webinar on opportunities in the oil & gas sector. He commended Nokta’s appointment to the post of Chair on the panel, and the government’s decision to put local content legislation on the front-burner in its legislative agenda. He said, however, that because the President has alluded to local content covering multiple industries, additional representatives would be beneficial.
The City Chamber has often taken the lead in local content advocacy, and has fostered public discourse in this regard. The GCCI has also been vocal about barriers to business, which could hamper locals in their quest to participate in the oil & gas sector.
Tucker said that GCCI tries to marry companies with “match-making services” so they can jump those barriers. He said that attaining the requisite standards too would help break barriers in the oil and gas sector, but that when it comes to breaking ‘artificial’ barriers, real legislative change is needed.
The government has committed to reviewing and building the capacity of Guyana’s regulatory framework, including updating and introducing legislation. As for the local content legislation, a highlight so far is the government’s appointment of the advisory panel, and more specifically, inclusion of Trinidadian local content expert, Anthony Paul.
The Guyana Oil & Gas Energy Chamber (GOGEC) yesterday commended President Ali’s appointment of the panel, and urged the government to carefully examine the local content proposals which were submitted by private sector organizations, with a view of ensuring that Guyanese are not left behind.
GOGEC President, Maniram Prashad said that the policy prepared by the previous government was done without meaningful consultations. He also noted that recommendations made by local content experts were ignored.
Kaieteur News, among other private sector bodies, had made recommendations to the former government during the consultation period for the policy, after interviewing local content experts and learning from experiences of other oil producing nations. When the policy was finalized, those recommendations were not included.
The sidelining of expert advice and private sector views would have to rest on the shoulders of the consultant who created the former government’s final policy, Dr. Michael Warner. Anthony Paul had been hired to work on earlier drafts, which he did. But he was later replaced by the coalition government, with the ExxonMobil affiliate, Warner. The UK consultant’s history with Exxon’s Centre for Local Business Development registers a clear conflict of interest. Despite this newspaper’s expose of the conflict, the former government allowed Dr. Warner to remove Paul’s safeguards and finalise the policy which is now being criticised for disregarding advice.