$20M set aside for Local Content Secretariat

Feb 15, 2022 News

Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat

Kaieteur News – Guyana, this past week commenced pumping crude from its second Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel and, according to stakeholders, the growing industry will see financial and other benefits redounding to the ordinary Guyanese through measures such as the recently introduced Local Content laws.
With this in mind, it was disclosed during the recently concluded budgetary approval process that the Minister of Natural Resources has in fact set aside $20M for the setting up of a Local Content Secretariat.
The disclosure was made by Subject Minister, Vickram Bharrat, who was at the time being grilled during the Committee of Supply stage of the approval process when he made the disclosure.
Additionally, the Minister told Members of the legislative body that government has also set aside an additional sum of $5M for the hiring of a consultant with a view to preparing a local content data repository or a data bank.
Minister Bharrat told the House, “At some point in time, like all petroleum producing nations, we must move to have our own data bank.”
He was adamant; it is not advantageous for “us to continue in this manner.”
As such, he disclosed that the paid consultant will be asked to do an assessment towards the design for that data repository, essentially to indicate to the administration what types of hardware would be needed in setting up such a data bank “and how we can move forward.”
The Data Repository/Data Bank, according to Bharrat, would host information pertaining to local suppliers of goods and services in the oil industry for which the oil companies would have to give first preference.
At present, ExxonMobil secures domestic suppliers of goods and services through the Centre for Local Government and Business Development (CLBD), an ExxonMobil funded outfit.
Attorney General, Anil Nandlall had since last year, signalled an intention to set up the outfit on the part of government in order to have ExxonMobil no longer solely determining what constitutes local content.
With the setting up of a Local Content Secretariat, there will be the creation of two registers of companies and Guyanese.
It was previously adumbrated that these registers will return to the State, the power to ensure operators and their subcontractors are fairly directing opportunities for employment, procurement and capacity building to Guyanese nationals.
In response to concerns that the requirements of the Local Content Legislation would be in conflict with ExxonMobil’s controlled CLBD, Nandlall had said the government is in receipt of a litany of stories from the private sector which have detailed acts of discrimination, neglect, and how they were ostracised from getting fair opportunities in that organisation.
He had said the Secretariat would not replace the Exxon centre but it would ensure the State has its own apparatus of measuring true local content. He said anyone who is not part of the register can still compete, but would not be considered as part of any company’s local content achievements.

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