Dear Editor,
The Natural Resources section of APNU’s manifesto (reproduced in SN of November 23) under Mining Sector mentions that “APNU in a new administration will encourage companies operating in Guyana to broaden their ownership bases to include ordinary Guyanese employees.“
Clearly the overarching idea is to create a stakeholder or win-win economy and society. By this I mean an environment in which ownership of resources and productive assets is in the hands of groups of Guyanese citizens exclusively or in partnerships with foreign investors.
Any civilized community or government would be justly concerned to create as much wealth as it can, to ensure that income and wealth are fairly shared and that centres of private and public power are properly accountable. The aim must be to build a free, moral, socially cohesive society based on universal membership, social inclusion and organized around a Guyanese model of the market economy. This is what I mean by the stakeholder win-win economy and society.
If these are to be the ends, what are the means? Among other things, the gap between rich and poor is growing inexorably. In fact as things stand in Guyana today, probably less than 1% of our population own and control some 95% of our economy. It is this government’s intention that when petroleum revenue and ‘tree money’ come on stream, a clutch of crony businessmen will own Guyana almost outright. Stakeholder win-win economics will seek to reverse this trend.
The time has come for Guyanese people in their numbers to take hold of what is really theirs. APNU government must encourage, by way of incentives, foreign investors to broaden their ownership so that ordinary Guyanese employees cease to be mere factors of production and become shareholders participating in equity. For instance as stated in APNU’s manifesto “Royalty on gold will be maintained. If a given company satisfies the government that it has implemented a satisfactory Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) or other ownership-broadening mechanism, it may, for a limited period, be given a royalty discount.” With the right incentives most modern, socially aware investors will agree to set aside a percentage of their company’s shares for employee ownership. Many international investors in the mining sector are comfortable with this type of arrangement and see it as progressive.
With APNU in government Guyana may yet become a nation of owners rather than a nation of the possessed.
Yours faithfully,
F Hamley Case
