Local Content policy must embrace strong regulatory practices to protect against `fronting’ - UG Business Professor

Dr Leyland Lucas, Visiting Professor at the School of Entrepreneur-ship and Business Innovation (SEBI) at the University of Guyana has said that the pursuit of an effective local content policy for the oil and gas industry must seek, among other things, to create a local content policy that seeks to bring an equity of benefits.

“Whenever new opportunities arise, there will always be efforts to accrue benefits by some who are not entitled to do so. Particularly in a country such as ours where control systems are stretched and dishonesty is pervasive, regulations must be enacted against such things as ‘fronting.’ Strong regulatory controls must be established to guard against firms using nefarious means to indicate their eligibility. While no fool-proof system can be designed, there must be enough sizeable penalties to serve as disincentives to those who seek to violate the rules,” the UG Professor writes in an article published in this issue of the Stabroek Business.

Professor Lucas says, meanwhile, that the building of a strong educational system is essential if Guyana is to benefit from an oil and gas-driven local content policy. “For me, a strong educational system is essential to benefitting from any local content policy. The educational system must provide the skills needed by local firms that are either positioned or are seeking to position themselves to benefit from any local content policy,” Professor Lucas says in a paper titled ‘Challenges to Local Content Policy’ prepared for publication in the Stabroek Business.

And according to Dr. Lucas, Guyana may, as yet, still not have such an education system. “Over the years, we have seen tertiary institutions receiving limited resources. One does not produce engineers, supply chain management experts, logistics personnel, managers and forensic accountants overnight, Lucas says, adding that “doing so requires years of investment in academic offerings.” The university academic says in his article that such investments “require the recruitment of highly qualified and committed faculty, capable and innovative academic administrators, provision of equipment on which state-of-the-art training can occur, construction of modern training facilities and a shift in the approach to learning,” which shift, her said, should emphasize both risk-taking and innovativeness “as against the current focus on rote learning and regurgitative practices.”

And Lucas says in his article