Editorial Oil and the future

While she acknowledged that Trinidad and Tobago was not an exemplar in oil and gas management, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar was nevertheless able to pitch her Thursday address to the manufacturers association towards pivotal issues this country has to address.

Speaking about the decision to close Trinidad’s oil refinery she said: “While you will be shooting rockets up in the sky, we will be shooting down into the grave in terms of our economy. That is what I see that latest decision is about,” she said. “I am hopeful and fairly certain that this is one path that Guyana should never find itself on. Guyana should, above all other things, especially having been an importer of energy for so long, work towards ensuring its energy security and energy independence. We have just surrendered our energy security by decisions taken with respect to Petrotrin. I urge you never to do that. These are critical to a country’s success and indeed future,” she added.

On the spending of the expected windfall from oil production, she said she would recommend that government’s national vision should be the improvement of the lives of all citizens.

She advised a national policy for development of Guyana, involving all stakeholders.

“You should be sitting in a think tank now and develop a national policy. What do you see seven generations down?”

If there is none in place, she said, “Don’t wait till 2020. Now is the time to have this national policy for development.”

Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s reference to a national policy is a timely reminder to the government here. Unfortunately, the decisionmakers in Georgetown are completely engrossed in their own little spheres to even begin thinking expansively about the way ahead. The Department of Energy is just beginning to come to grips with its mandate and is hardly out of the starting blocks even though numerous pressing challenges are confronting it such as ensuring a framework for protection of the environment from any potential oil spill and finding adequate means of testing every single financial claim by ExxonMobil and its affiliates.

On another front, the Ministry of Finance continues to inch forward on the question of the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) with a model that does not provide any insulation against interference and direction by the ministry and politicians.

Totally absent from the dialogue is any hint of a national plan to map out what Guyana is to look like in the future whether three generations or seven generations ahead, a vision that should influence the fiscal rule that will guide the NRF. What will be the fundamental bases of the future economy? Will it be hitched to the software industry or artificial intelligence? Will primary production of sugar, bauxite and timber be completely phased out in the next 10 years? Where are visionary plans for agriculture in the intermediate savannahs and beyond?

What is the mechanism through which Guyana’s oil revenues will enable the diversification of the economy away from fossil fuels into clean energy? What are the sectors that hold the promise of ever expanding numbers of jobs and higher paying ones? What is our oil/natural resources depletion policy? Should all of our known reserves and future finds be extracted at the behest of explorers or is that to be determined by the people of this country?

Over the tortured years of its independence, the country hasn’t been short of any number of painstakingly-drafted development plans, the canned National Development Strategy (NDS) being a prime case in point. There is no possibility of salvaging the NDS. Yet, the ordered and strategic development of the country’s resources requires such a plan. In its three and a half years in office, the APNU+AFC government has not shown any real interest in the compilation of such a plan.

There hasn’t been a shortage of `experts’ pouring into the country under the auspices of a variety of organisations. However, none of these efforts has within them the kernel of the development of a plan to guide the future oil economy. All of the thinking is in the now as if there is an incipient recognition that a broader plan requires a political concordat which appears impossible at this point.

The country cannot subsist on an APNU plan, a PNCR plan, a PPP/Civic plan, an AFC plan or a private sector plan. It requires all of these stakeholders and more to come together to craft what

the future of the country will be like fully cognizant of the poor absorptive capacity in the spending of revenues, the risk of a strengthening currency on the export of goods and services and the debilitating loss of skills and people that continues.

What major infrastructural projects should be pursued? Where should a bridge across the Essequibo River be located and how will that enable job-filled economic growth? Is there a need for a positive immigration policy to boost the internal economy which has remained limp with a population of only three quarters of a million and a high proportion of sellers to buyers? Should Guyana’s proximity to Brazil’s northern states be fully leveraged? Should Guyana endeavour to supply hydropower to these states from its abundant capacity in this area? While draining carbon emitting fuels how exactly is Guyana going to meet its green energy ambitions? Should the capital be moved inland and should railways be restored?

How are all of these varying strands going to be pulled together in a cohesive way so that no matter which or what type of government is in place in the future, the country and all of its people are aware of a road map and how Guyana intends to navigate the risk-filled period ahead? These are the complexities which should be occupying the energies of our leaders. In all fairness, it should be the APNU+AFC government that should be leading the involvement of all stakeholders here and from the diaspora in the crafting of a plan for Guyana’s oil future. There is no such hint. The administration remains completely preoccupied with the day-to-day minutiae of government and stumbling along in its discharge. Its own incapacity in governing the country is a major problem. It is yet to compute how late in the day it is in terms of beginning to configure the future of the country.

With local government elections being held today, one hopes that the administration will shortly sit down and determine a way forward for devising a broad-based plan for the future that involves all stakeholders.