Vaitarna Holding PVT Limited has applied to the Guyana Forestry Commission to have its Timber Sales Agreement (TSA) transferred to Vaitarna Holding Private Incorporated.
In an ad in the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, the GFC said that details are available for inspection at the Commission’s Water Street office. The company is controlled by the India-based Coffee Day Group which has applied for a TSA for its concession in Region Nine. A TSA would allow the company to harvest logs.
The company already holds a TSA for another concession and has been in the spotlight recently for its log exports and its failure to set up the processing facility to which it had committed.
Coffee Day, through its Dark Forest subsidiary, in 2010 acquired the State Forest Exploratory Permit (SFEP) for 391,853 hectares of forest originally awarded in 2007 to US-based Simon and Shock International Logging Inc (SSILI) after buying out SSILI. After the acquisition, the company registered in Guyana as SSILI. Subsequently, Dark Forest acquired the 345,961 hectares concession which was originally awarded to Caribbean Resources Limited (CRL).
The government accepted an offer of $600 million for the Timber Sales Agreement (TSA). The company was registered as VHPI. The total area now held by Coffee Day is 737,814 hectares of forest, around 1.822 million acres.
V G Siddhartha, owner of the Coffee Day group which controls the two concessions, recently said that a processing centre for logs will be set up here, but the main facility will be in India. He said the company has exported logs from Guyana to India and China.
