Applaud President Jagdeo’s Venturing on the Marriott – A Success Story

Apr 13, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I write in response to the “Blunt Truth” in Kaieteur News (KN) of Wednesday, April 12, 2023. KN Blunt – yuh wrong, as you have been about 80% of the time. Whilst I recognize your concerns of the Government seemingly about to give away a “golden goose laying golden eggs,” there is a larger view for sustained long-term venturing and the process of development of Guyanese and Guyana -an alternative view -which must be presented.

Then President Jagdeo’s venturing into constructing the Marriott had its worrying periods but, on many counts, it has turned out just great – a great success story.  Let us applaud him, and thank him.  I don’t know if he will claim to have been born with the boon of being a “see far” man but he has been steadily looking into our possible futures. His LCDS 2010 earned him worldwide recognition as ‘Champion of the Earth’ and set the stage for Guyanese and Guyana, and other similarly less developed peoples and countries to earn money and other benefits from maintaining their standing forests, so that they could nevertheless get on with their development, in these times of awareness of earth warming and climate change, in a manner that would be win-win for all of our world and all peoples of our world.

No one ever knows how the future would turn out – so many things play into making the future.  My President Jagdeo, now VP, over his twelve years as President, desirous of and committed to the development of all Guyanese and Guyana (as we all were and continue to be) ventured a number of projects based on the logic of and faith in development.  One or two ventures have not turned out well: that is to be expected for nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Indeed, one of my set reading books of the late 1960’s/early 1970s, “Up the Organization”, maintained that if as a leader, you are doing better than one success in three ventures initiated, you may not be venturing enough and probably falling behind.  The challenge is to discern in good time whether an ongoing particular venture is succeeding or not and if not to adapt or end it; salvaging and learning as much as you could.  As the Gambler admonishes, you have to venture and having ventured, you have to know when to hold, when to fold, when to walk away, when to run.

The Marriott venture, acknowledging its worrying times, has turned out well.  In the third verse of “Blunt”, KN berates the VP for wanting to sell the Marriott, a golden goose, whilst in the preceding verse artfully derides the Marriott venture as placing billions of dollars of debt on (all) Guyanese heads. Which is it? – a golden goose or a debt burden? It could not be both.  We should not let KN Blunt have it both ways, indeed they should have it no way.

This KN Blunt of Wednesday, April 12 (like the majority) creates and exploits the misconceptions, misunderstandings and confusion when thinking appropriate for one situation is applied inappropriately to another.      The Marriott venture is proceeding along the lines and to the end as conceived, whether there was to be a discovery of oil off our shores or not.  Of course, Exxon’s discovery of oil made that project into a sure lucky venture.   We needed a new, brand-name hotel to improve Guyana’s attraction to visitors, particularly potential foreign investors – a new hotel that might help ignite our development.  At the time, no local or foreign individuals or groups was ready to venture, whilst there was lots of private liquid money in the banks that the Government had to be mopping up.  Generally speaking, as in the case of the Berbice bridge, the VP’s Government was ready to take the lead in bringing about a greatly required development, by putting up the required risk-taking equity portion of capital, and thereby attract the liquid money to provide the much less risky, debt portion of the capital. This is what was done to finance the construction and the establishment of that Marriott hotel.

The hope and expectation from the beginning was that some local or foreign investor would be emboldened to purchase the Government’s equity shares after the higher risk period of construction and startup had been navigated successfully.  There was never any intention for the Government to hold on to any equity in the Guyana Marriott hotel.  The VP wanted eventually, a sector with a number of hotels, everyone good for the money, which would be competing freely for the Government and other business.  The continued ownership by the Government of the equity or any shares in Marriott could have an unnecessary unsettling effect in a sector that is becoming wide open with many players offering a wide range of grades and prices, and competition seems assured.  Further, the Government in withdrawing from the hotel sector has that money to venture and lead some other necessary developments.

Allow me to identify one achievement of VP Jagdeo’s venturing with the Marriot which we should acknowledge.  You see the Pegasus today – President Ali recently led the glorious opening of its larger new addition.  Recall the level to which the Pegasus had succumbed shortly before the construction of the Marriott.  The beginning of that Marriott construction sparked an elegant rehabilitation of the then existing Pegasus.

There are other important achievements. I write this article as someone who sat at his desk and looking through his window, saw the construction of the Marriott from the beginning to the end – someone who worked at the necessary preparatory stage of site preparation in rerouting one of our major sewerage outfalls outside the proposed property; someone who saw that a different type of piling was being used – holes bored into the ground into which reinforced concrete pilings were cast.  I was pretty sure that in its mood at the time, Pegasus would have rushed to the court for an injunction against pile driving, if that hitherto usual method of construction was to be used.  I saw local building materials – sand and stone, bulk concrete and hollow blocks being delivered:  a significant local content before there were local content laws.  Even more, I learnt that the named contractor was a subsidiary of the Chinese firm established in Trinidad and Tobago – and a group of mostly Guyanese and T&T engineers from T&T called on me to say that they had been awarded the contract to design the foundations.  As the VP hoped and expected, other newer technology was being introduced into, Guyana, many opportunities to work were being created and levels of skills being lifted: and much was being learnt. Pegasus, in the presence of all the criticisms of the Government awarding the Marriot to a construction firm from China (which was evaluated as the best choice), turned to “follow pattern” the Government and chose a firm headquartered in China for its own huge, magnificent addition.

We all can and should applaud our VP’s venture in establishing the Guyana Marriott as that venture safely and successfully comes to its intended end. KN’s “Blunt” knowingly or unknowingly, and very wrongly, is doing much, much more harm than good to our society.

Samuel A A Hinds.

Former Prime Minister

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• BLUNT, Former Prime Minister, Jagdeo, Marriott, Samuel A A Hinds

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