The Guyana-Brazil road - again
Back on the government agenda is the Georgetown-Boa Vista road. This has the appearance of being a misnomer. One would have thought that what was really meant was a Georgetown-Lethem road, since there is already a well-surfaced Brazilian road running from the Takutu Bridge to Boa Vista, and Lethem is sited on the Guyana side of that bridge. It is conceivable, one supposes, that what is envisaged is also the expansion of the Brazilian stretch of the road, but even if in the unlikely event that were so it would be a matter for Brasilia, not for Georgetown.
A Georgetown-Lethem road has been mooted for decades, but the government has never been in a position to raise the level of financing which could make it a reality. Forbes Burnham and João Figueiredo initialled the first agreement for such a project in 1982, but it got no further. Desmond Hoyte visited Brazil in 1989 and signed an accord with José Sarney for the construction of the road which was to be embarked on with Brazilian financing, although once again little progress was made. Good intentions were repeated intermittently in the following decade, and in 2003 another flurry of agreements was signed, this time including one for a deep-water harbour in addition to the Guyana-Brazil corridor project.
The Brazilians did embark on constructing a bridge over the Takutu River, the first stage of a physical link to Guyana, but it was stalled for a very long time. It was finally opened in 2009, and included special arrangements for vehicles to cross from one side of a traffic lane to the other, to accommodate the fact that Brazilians drive on the right and Guyanese on the left. Two years later this new connection led on to an International Road Transport Agreement to regularise the movement of vehicles and their goods across the border.
In 2020 decisions were taken by the two countries to resume discussions on the completion of the Guyana-Brazil Road, as well as on implementing the International Road Transport Agreement of 2011. And in the latest development in this long-running saga, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro flew in here for a brief visit a little over a week ago to revive old agreements, in addition to more recent ones.
Following his encounter with President Irfaan Ali it was announced that the two
heads of state had decided to set up a bilateral working group to evaluate the potential benefits of a Boa Vista-Georgetown corridor in terms of trade and investment. The group would also be charged with identifying areas where technical assistance might possibly be needed, as well as with finding potential private partners and international financial institutions which could contribute to the project, a joint statement released by the two Presidents said.
As the latest member of the oil producing fraternity, the administration probably now believes that finally the highway’s time has come. The evidence is that it might not be mistaken. Early in February this year Finance Minister Ashni Singh announced that a Brazilian company had been awarded the contract to upgrade the 121 km road between Linden and Mabura Hill.
The total cost involved was US$190 million and was to be financed by Guyana, the UK and the CDB. According to the release the project would be the largest ever funded by the CDB, which was putting up US$112 in the form of a loan. The UK would be providing a US$66 million grant, and the Guyana government would be contributing US$12 million.
Significantly, the Ministry of Finance in a press statement said that the road would make a major contribution to easing travel, trade and general connectivity between Guyana and Brazil, and open up vast opportunities by linking the country’s hinterland communities to the capital. In other words, both the financiers and the Government of Guyana regard this stretch as stage one of a much more ambitious project.
In earlier times there was never much doubt that the road was primarily in Brazil’s interest as long as it was connected to a deep-water harbour project. Without that element its benefits to our neighbour were very much more limited. What Brasilia has always wanted is an outlet to the Caribbean Sea and a port through which its north-east could import and export goods. It would be infinitely cheaper to do that through Guyana owing to the shorter distances involved than it is at the moment through cities like Belém, for example.
The advantages to Guyana are less clearly defined. While a road to Lethem (absent a port) would open up the interior for good or ill, controlling a corridor where Brazilian heavyduty vehicles are thundering through to a deep-water harbour in Georgetown is an altogether different matter. Brazil’s record in the Amazon (particularly under President Bolsonaro) is nothing short of disgraceful, and the history of the past decades shows that once a road is driven through tropical forest, that
forest is destroyed because it attracts all kinds of interlopers from miners to farmers to businesspeople who usually bring any number of seedy enterprises in their wake. It is also a disaster for any Indigenous inhabitants in the area. The road from Lethem for most of its route will be traversing forest, including, it must be said, the Iwokrama Rainforest, a Commonwealth project. So much for our commitment to environmental responsibility. We cannot even control mining in our interior as things stand; we have neither the resources, the manpower or possibly the will. Preventing illegal incursions from Brazilian miners in particular, or the establishment of illegal drinking and other establishments or the harassment of Indigenous inhabitants would require resources and a level of organisation that we simply do not have at present.
Brazil is a massive country with a huge population that constitutes the heavyweight on this continent. No matter how much oil Guyana finds, it will never be in much of a position to stand up to Brasilia in relation to the destruction of our forest environment and the abuse of our population. We are simply too small. When Venezuela some years ago complained to Brazil about the invasion of its indigenous Yanomami territory by the latter’s miners, and asked for assistance to remove them, Brasilia’s first response was effectively that it was Caracas’s problem.
No government in this country will be receptive to any idea that at least we should put a hold on any thought of a deep-water port which will service Brazil, while leaving the road to link the coast with the interior. However, in these latest proposals there is one glimmer of hope, and that is the possibility of a rail link as well as a road. After the meeting President Ali said that the focus was on an integrated project involving “a deep-water port, the road-rail link, fibre optic connectivity, development of the energy corridor, the creation of a free zone and the linkage of natural resource development to this project.”
In such a scenario it would be possible to envisage the movement of goods to and from Brazil by rail, reducing traffic on the road and making that corridor altogether easier to manage and control. Adding rail to the project, of course, would make it infinitely more expensive, and it remains to be seen whether the government will be able to raise the enormous funding which will be required.