Bright light needs to be shone on MNR/GGMC over award of oil blocks
Dear Editor,
The objective for awarding oil blocks is to generate the maximum oil revenue (money) over the longterm for the benefit of the whole country. We benefit from the sensible spending of oil revenue to improve quality of life and to create meaningful jobs. We also benefit by the saving of part of the oil revenue for our children and grandchildren. Hence we need to focus on getting the maximum amount of money for our oil (e.g. by re-negotiating unfair contracts, by rescinding fraudulent contracts, etc).
The country does not benefit when a few well-connected people get oil blocks and become rich. For example, the country does not benefit when say twenty well connected Guyanese get a couple million US$ in the bank, a couple Land Cruisers, and acquire some properties in Miami and Long Island. This does nothing to help the country and its people.
Blocks must only be awarded via
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or, more specifically, not at all. The upshot of this is that we find ourselves, repeatedly tinkering with an inherently defective ‘wheel.’ Predictably, the shortcomings of the previous effort inevitably find their way into the planning and execution of the next one. At last week’s launch of GuyTIE 2020 we were told that its mission is to provide a platform for local businesses to engage with foreign buyers and investors and other potential partners. That is pretty much what we were told in 2018 so that the organizers of next year’s event need to come to terms with (if they have not already done so) what their planning and execution glitches were in the rolling out of GuyTIE 1. A carbon copy emulation of what transpired in 2018 will not bring a different result. A key lesson that has to be learnt before a finger is lifted to commence planning of GuyTIE 2020 is that events of this nature cannot be sold to sophisticated international markets utilizing under-cooked and under-resourced promotional pursuits driven by ideas that are stranger to the idiosyncrasies of the market to which the event seeks to appeal. Planning for GuyTIE 2020 has to be preceded by a sense of mission, a clear understanding of what is likely to be the best strategic approach to the accomplishment of that mission and the selection of an execution team considered the best qualified to accomplish the mission. If these basic requisites are not seriously attended to GuyTIE 2020 could, like its predecessor, fall short of official expectations. While the announcement on Wednesday that next year’s event will embrace the local arts and culture industry is a welcome one, the organizers will be challenged to make a determination regarding the state of preparedness of that sector to generate meaningful international market appeal to the extent that sustainable and potentially lucrative business linkages can be realized. Frankly, there may be no less robust a case for the agro processing sector which, truth be told, has ‘come on’ leaps and bounds in recent years on account of the considerable backing of entities like the Guyana Marketing Corporation and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association. It is high time that government respond even more to what these modest but thriving businesses have done by providing them with more incentives to raise their game further. If it may seem at this stage that February 2020 is still several months away, the organizers of GuyTIE 11 are bound to be aware of the likely ‘competing’ national agenda between now and February 2020. That circumstance, in itself, is likely to pose planning challenges. Still, if GuyTIE 11 is to stand any real chance of improving on the 2018 effort then there cannot be any lengthy interregnum between last Wednesday’s launch and the earnest commencement of work towards the February 2020 event.