Category: Letters to the editor

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Any delegating of authority to GRA to audit transactions under Petroleum Agreement will raise legal and other questions

I congratulate Mr. Godfrey Statia, Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority for the tone of his letter in your pages – SN Sept. 7, 2018 `As an agent of the Gov’t for tax collection, GRA is acting as lawful delegate in auditing ExxonMobil.’ Without my stating it, the respect he expressed for me, and I am sure for Mr. John Seeram as well, is mutual and is based not out of friendship going back more than thirty years but out of my conviction that despite the exasperating bureaucracy that taxpayers are forced to deal with, Mr. Statia and his officers are doing a good job under challenging circumstances.

His was a response to my letter (SN Sept. 6, 2018 `GRA tax audit is no substitute for the audit of the transactions under the oil contract’) in which I distinguished between an audit by the GRA and one under what is popularly but incorrectly referred to as the ExxonMobil Contract. He acknowledged this only by implication by suggesting that the GRA can carry out this other audit by delegation from the Minister under Article 6.2 of the Petroleum Agreement which allows the Minister to delegate to Other Government entities the performance of these or any other duties under the Contract. Continue reading “Any delegating of authority to GRA to audit transactions under Petroleum Agreement will raise legal and other questions”

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Minister of Finance should not bring Deposit Insurance Act into operation until appropriate rate of premium has been actuarially determined

A recent report of the World Bank discloses that the “hinterland areas, where only 9.6 percent of the total population resided, housed 64 percent of the Guyanese population with acute deprivation in health, education and standard of living.” The report also referred to latest poverty estimates which show that poverty in Guyana is deepest in the rural interior regions at 73.5 percent.

Yet, when the Government approaches the World Bank – part of the Washington Consensus associated with the most draconian of conditionalities attaching to the Hoyte/Greenidge Economic Recovery Programme – for funding, it imposes on Guyana not conditionalities but what is refers to as “prior action”. So here we have it, the Granger Administration, in return for a loan of US$35 million acquiesces without any hesitation or question to pass four pieces of legislation, none of which address the problems which the Report helpfully discloses but callously disregards. Continue reading “Minister of Finance should not bring Deposit Insurance Act into operation until appropriate rate of premium has been actuarially determined”

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Mr Khan’s accusation over the US$460m pre-contract cost was erroneous

I shared with Ms. Lisa Sachs, Director, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, USA, Dr. Jan Mangal former Petroleum Presidential Advisor, and Mr. Imran Khan of the Department of Public Information an Al Jazeera programme on Monday July 30. During the course of the half an hour discussion, responding to my assertion that ExxonMobil’s claim of US$460 million as per-contract cost to December 31, 2015 was inflated, Mr. Khan’s response was that my statement was unsubstantiated.

Immediately after the programme, Imran admitted to me on the telephone that he had not read my 44th Stabroek News Oil and Gas column published on May 24, 2018 which did exactly what he claimed I had not done. It is of course improper for Mr. Khan to make such an accusation to a domestic audience, let alone an international audience, whether out of ignorance or otherwise since no subsequent correction can undo the error.

In any case, I know and trust Mr. Khan to do the decent thing and to acknowledge his uninformed claim.

In our very cordial telephone conversation, I also drew Mr. Khan’s attention to column # 52 in the Oil and Gas series in which I produced a short table evidencing plagiarism in a statement issued by his Department. His response was that the plagiarism (my word) emanated from the Ministry of Finance and was merely repeated by his Department.

It would be good for Mr. Khan’s own professional reputation to avoid being a mouthpiece and acting more like a professional.

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Gov’t depriving Berbice Bridge Company and investors of rights under the law and concession agreement

A recent letter by Berbician Mr. Nowrang Persaud advocating for the Government to assume full ownership, control and management of the Berbice River Bridge appears to have aroused the disfavour of Minister of Public Security Mr. David Patterson and the Department of the Public Information. The Department quoted the Minister as assuring all Berbicians and users of the Bridge that the Government is not contemplating any increases to the Berbice Bridge Toll.

Minister Patterson seems to believe that it is that simple and simplistic. He must not only be familiar with the Provisions of the Berbice River Bridge Act but also the Concession Agreement dated June 26, 2006 under which the Bridge operates, and over which he exercises ministerial responsibility and has certain obligations to the Bridge Company and its investors.

The Concession Agreement was made under the laws of Guyana and obligates the Minister and the Government to grant periodic increases to tolls based on specific indications and circumstances as computed under Schedule 4 to the Concession Agreement. Continue reading “Gov’t depriving Berbice Bridge Company and investors of rights under the law and concession agreement”

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AFC has exhibited duplicitous leadership

I find the report by Mr. Raphael Trotman, leader of the key coalition party Alliance For Change (AFC) that his party will not support the Sedition Clause (clause 18) in the Cybercrime Bill of 2016 most astonishing. Mr. Trotman must be aware that Chairman and immediate past leader of the AFC and Vice-President of Guyana Khemraj Ramjattan and AFC MP Mr. Michael Carrington were members of the Committee and that both were present and voted to retain the dangerously offensive clause 18.

In fact, Mr. Ramjattan played a key role in the Committee, including referring the Bill to a lecturer at a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association which he attended and also in offering guidance to the Select Committee that the “Commonwealth has a standard Legislation/Model Act and the Cybercrime Bill emanated from that Act.” At best, Mr. Ramjattan could only have been referring to the 2002 Commonwealth Computer and Computer Related Crimes Model Law. Incidentally, a 2014 Discussion Paper on Cybercrime Model Laws prepared for the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T – CY) reports that the Commonwealth Model Law could not be found on the Commonwealth Secretariat’s website and has “been of little relevance in terms of impact upon Commonwealth countries or even generally.”

The reason that I find Trotman’s statement so offensive is that it represents a pattern of conduct in which Trotman and the leadership of the AFC seek to distance the Party whenever questions arise in the public over odious matters supported by the Party in private. Under the Party’s duplicitous leadership, the policy is to support even the most reprehensible and outrageous acts of the Coalition and in the event there is public outrage, the reaction is distance, deny and disown. They did so in relation to VAT on education, the parking meter contract and the Esso/Hess and CNOOC/NEXEN petroleum contract.

Having played a leading role in the formation of the AFC, including hosting and chairing pre-formation meetings, the writing of the party’s constitution, the selection of the party’s logo, and participation in almost every single meeting of the parliamentary party to plan strategies and responses to the annual budgets under the PPP/C, I am shocked to see what the party has become – opportunistic, self-serving and dishonest – seeking only to promote the interests and comforts of a few leading members.

Having read the Report and the Minutes of the Select Committee and the Bill as recommended to the National Assembly, it is clear to me that the high-powered Select Committee did a rather superficial and poor job under the chairmanship of the Attorney General Basil Williams. The APNU and the AFC have used the ruse of a Cybercrime Bill to reintroduce Sedition Legislation nakedly seeking to protect not the State but the Government. That is not what cybercrime laws are about.

My recommendation is that the entire Bill be scrapped and replaced by a Bill based on the Budapest Convention.