GCCI, gas project and possible disconnect

Feb 18, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Richard Rambarran, Senior Vice President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has provided verbal backing for the chamber’s letter to the US Export Import Bank (EXIM) in support of a Guyana Government loan application. The loan is for US$646M for the natural gas and power plant components of the Wales Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project, and EXIM has held up approving the loan for unknown reasons. Considering this project’s visibility, and with American companies involved, the expectation is that the loan approval would already have been in hand, and not the mystery that it has become.

We thank Mr. Rambarran for taking the time to elaborate on the underpinnings that prompted GCCI’s letter to EXIM. Mr. Rambarran is an economist, so he possesses a better than layman understanding of the anxieties concerning this Wales Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project. Guyanese want cheap, reliable electricity supply, but all they have been presented with to date are the insistent words and postures of a politician, who has not inspired much confidence. Vice President Jagdeo is the driving force behind this GTE project, but he has not offered Guyanese much convincing backing. We regret that this is not good enough, far from acceptable when Jagdeo’s record is scrutinized under an honest microscope. Failure has been the middle name of many of his previously highly touted pet projects.

But Mr. Rambarran, a man who should know, now says that the GCCI had enough information to take its confident position, which inspired the chamber’s letter to EXIM. According to Mr. Rambarran, the GCCI did its own analysis, consulted with its own experts, and came to its own conclusions. Further, the GCCI has the necessary supporting information, and he promised to make it public in a few days. Once again, it is encouraging to learn of the work that the GCCI has done behind the scenes, and the results of its efforts. Again, we thank Mr. Rambarran and look forward to what the GCCI will place in the public domain, and how much persuasive power it has.

But there is what seems like a slight disconnect, with what Mr. Rambarran expertly put forward versus what was already put out before the Guyanese public by the President of the GCCI, Mr. Kester Hutson. The learned Mr. Hutson said this: “Our responsibility or my responsibility as president and by extension the executive and councilor is to inform our members with the requisite knowledge that is being shared. So as much information that we have we will share with our members and of course we are well informed to take that business posture to invest. Once sufficient information is presented then certainly yes.”

From our perspective, there is a puzzle here, a contradiction in Mr. Hutson’s own statement, and which also has the telling effect of making us look at Mr. Rambarran’s words a little differently.

On the one hand, “as much information that we have…we are well informed to take that business posture to invest.” That is pretty cut and dried. But, on the other hand, Mr. Hutson qualified his response with “once sufficient information is presented then certainly yes.” We are baffled by Mr. Hutson’s conditional about “sufficient information”: it is either there, or it is not there, which brings into question the complete basis for its seeming recommendation (“business posture”) to the GCCI’s members. Moreover, Mr. Hutson’s employment of “once” indicates that some related information may still not be in the chamber’s hands.

To return to Mr. Rambarran, he said that the GCCI had done its homework, and had all that it needed for that letter to EXIM to be sent. But prior to Mr. Rambarran’s stout representations on behalf of the GCCI, there was no less a person than Mr. Hutson, the GCCI’s president, speaking about “once sufficient information” is there, then there would be the follow-up to the chamber’s members to put their money into the GTE project. Because it is sound, and would be worth the investment. Unless we are misinterpreting Mr. Hutson, he appeared to be engaging in some careful hedging about investing. The same cannot be said of Mr. Rambarran, and this only adds to the riddle that is this GTE project.

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“business posture”, Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, Guyana Government, Mr. Rambarran’s, Wales Gas-to-Energy

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