Foreign investors or foreign exploiters 

Aug 15, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

There is a case being made in the news that Guyana needs foreign investment to move forward, this is correct as every nation rich or poor have some amount of foreign investment. However, in business, there is KYI (Know Your Investor), Guyana must ensure foreign investors are well vetted for credibility, ethics, trustworthiness, their source of income, willingness to follow Guyana’s rule of law, engaging in good faith business deals and leaders representing Guyana must ensure, when dealing with foreign investors, protecting the citizens’ and the country’s wellbeing is the most important aspect of these partnerships, unfortunately for Guyana, it’s administration for many decades in this regard have been dismal failures.

Responsible leaders don’t let the foreign investor value their country’s assets, they do independent valuation, their sense should tell them, the mere fact the investors came from first world country to a third world country to do business, indicates the third world country have valuable assets. There are independent companies in the world who uses ground penetrating radar and underwater sonar technology, showing you on live TV screen what’s under the ground an under the ocean floor, the cost to do this is far less than one terminal at the CJIA. Guyana’s signatories of the oil and oil blocks and other resource contracts said they were told to sign contracts and did, without seeing anything.

Responsible leaders would protect the ownership rights of their country’s assets. Guyana could have raised money by selling shares to Guyanese locally and abroad and along with manageable financing could have controlled enough shares to dictate how the profits the oil, mining and forestry sectors could have been benefitting every Guyanese; this is not new as Banks DIH already uses this model. Instead, Exxon, Hess and CNOOC own 100 percent of the oil holdings and we don’t know who owns the mining and forestry holdings as the press has no access to those contracts. The leaders gave away all Guyana’s rights for the oil, mining and forestry sectors leaving Guyanese with no ownership.

Responsible leaders would have ensured their country got a large signing bonus at the onset of oil, mining and forestry contracts to sustain the economy until revenues starts to generate from these sectors. The coalition leaders took 18M USD and tried to hide it in a bank account, in this computerised age, hoping no one would know. Now under the current government, oil is pumping, resources mined, timber produced and being shipped away meanwhile Guyanese gets nothing, except debt plus absorbing the risks of environmental damage, THESE ARE WHAT GUYANESE GET FROM THE FOREIGN INVESTMENTS IN GUYANA. The oil money projected for Guyana by 2040 is $157B can the Oil Companies or Guyana’s leaders explain this math to the people?  $157B minus (25 projects @ $8 billion per project) minus (debt, interest, and other costs) minus (loss of the fishing and other industries) or clarify if this $157B will be after all these costs are deducted? Besides, how can they even guarantee $157B, since oil prices are volatile and change regularly.

In the USA, every day the wealth gap between rich and poor increases rapidly, every day over 10 middle class citizens get poorer and even homeless, losing their jobs to automation, cheap labour and outsourcing while the large investors declare record profits and orders custom made luxury yachts, vehicles, private jets and are booking trips to outer space. Currently, in the Henan Province of China, there is a banking crisis among the big banks, as one CEO Kim Chan-kyong stole $33B Dollars and tried to flee the country, the banks have now frozen withdrawals by customers and there are protests in over 85 cities in China, the government have resorted to arresting and jailing protesters who are protesting for their own lifesavings’ money.

Guyanese, USA and China are where the majority of your foreign investors come from, if this is what they can do to their own country people who look like them, imagine what they have in store for you. I can’t think of one-third world country where investors of these two countries went to and life of poor people improved for long periods of time, since they can’t take care of their own poor in their own countries.

The leaders of Guyana who signed deals with these foreign investors to rob and destroy this country, didn’t do it due to misinformation or incompetence but due to evilness and sinisterism, WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN AND THE POWER OF THEIR OFFICES, THEY FULLY WELL KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WHEN THEY SOLD GUYANA OUT. There are two reasons to support this, firstly, for big economic projects a government announces these projects in advance, get the necessary experts and construct a good deal, then sign the deals in front of cameras, instead every deal for Guyana’s assets are done in secret, abroad, in the night and early morning when the nation is sleeping or unaware, secondly, to obtain their degrees, masters, PhDs and, accreditations, like me and others, current and past parliamentarians had to have studied and passed courses like, best business practices, fiscal accounting, auditing, contractual law, effective negotiation tactics, asset valuation and ownership, value for money financial management, etc.

Instead of Guyana’s leaders removing their lawyers from the case filed by Glenn Lall, giving Guyana a chance to collect taxes from the oil companies, Guyana’s leaders have resorted to barefaced lying at press conferences and meetings. They are following the same script from the oil companies propaganda machine, while berating reporters from the Kaieteur News and other sources who oppose, expose and questions the unethical and exploitive business operations in Guyana. I’ll bet there is nowhere in the oil contract that stipulates, Guyana should be fighting itself in favour of the oil companies, as this would make no sense whatsoever.

Now with all Guyana’s valuable assets under the control of the foreign investors, the only foreign investors Guyana needs at this time, is for these investors to come and challenge the oil, mining, and forestry contracts for a percentage fee, as long as Guyanese can get a fair share of their wealth.

 

Regard,

R. David

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