In his opening address at GuyExpo 2007 where he spoke feelingly about his vision for Guyana, President Jagdeo adverted to three areas in which he desired a partnership with business. One of these was addressing what he described as the gap between the image of the country and the reality of life here. By implication he was arguing that the image of the country here and abroad was unnecessarily negative and not reflective of progress.
“An inaccurate image of the business climate within our country – whether in international competitiveness indices, media coverage or financial ratings – has real bottom-line impact on our private sector’s ability to expand. This manifests itself through high country risk factors and therefore higher prices for financial products which businesses need to grow”. He followed this up by saying during a recent visit to New York he had had discussions with some of the captains of American industry and they had expressed their frustration with the quality of many international business commentaries on countries like Guyana as they were done by persons who had never run a business or major government department. This situation he said could only be addressed by the government and business jointly correcting inaccuracies and cooperating to better the country’s image abroad.
Though he made no direct reference to them, the President could well have been referring to the findings of two international reports which appeared in this newspaper on the day that GuyExpo opened. One was Transparency International’s (TI) annual survey on the perceived level of corruption in countries and the other was the global report compiled by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private sector arm of the World Bank – on Doing Business. Neither of the two painted flattering reports on the situation here and the IFC report cited the severe difficulty that businesses have in accessing financing – something that the President interestingly spoke about in his GuyExpo address declaring that an accessible and competitive financial sector was needed and the business community had to demand competitive products from the country’s banks and other financial institutions. That in itself seems to bear out one of the major findings of the IFC report.
Aside from the cross-cutting issue of crime which remains one of the major reasons why the image of the country abroad is poor in relation to investing and touring and which issue neither the TI nor the IFC reports addressed, there is a growing perception and reality that the opaqueness of government business and dealings is another major problem.
This is the type of concern that would generously feed the views of the experts canvassed for the TI report that corruption was rampant here. Where corruption is rampant or even perceived to be rampant, businesses and investor dollars generally tend to stay away and so the government would understandably fret over this survey.
Just a little over one year into his five-year administration, President Jagdeo has to address the reality that his government is not as open as it should be and key oversight bodies are stymied. This unfortunately leads to concerns about untoward practices even where they may be no grounds for this.
It’s been four years now since the PPP/C government and the PNCR have deadlocked over the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) and its tribunal. How can vast procurement contracts be awarded in the absence of the oversight commission without this leading to the perception that the aggrieved have no avenue for redress and that adequate checks and balances are not in place? As stated by Article 212W of the Constitution, the PPC “is to monitor public procurement and the procedure therefor in order to ensure that the procurement of goods, services and execution of works are conducted in a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective manner”. Its role and powers are addressed in seven pages of the 239-page reformed constitution.
Recently two procurement issues arose. One had to do with Kirkpatrick’s Catering voicing concern that it had not had adequate notice of the invitation to tender for parliamentary catering. How will this concern be handled to the satisfaction of the prospective tenderer in light of the absence of the PPC and the tribunal? The other matter pertained to a GINA report that an Indian firm was drawing up plans for the possible construction of two large sports facilities that the government was going to build. Was this a case of single-sourcing or was there a public invitation for tenders? No answer has yet been provided but needless to say questions abound. At the end of the day, the absence of the PPC does not affect the image of the government or the PNCR but it does impact on how the country is viewed.
The surprise announcement that Mr Karan Singh had been chosen to head the Guyana Water Inc has also raised concerns. He had exited GWI’s predecessor, the Guyana Water Authority (Guywa) to pave the way for a five-year UK-funded management contract. Given the then state of Guywa and the questions that had been raised during his tenure it was passing strange that he would be deemed the best candidate to take the helm of GWI. The haze over the appointment prompted an unusual and diplomatically worded response from three international donors: the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development saying that they had neither endorsed nor contested Mr Singh’s appointment as this was a matter for the government and board of GWI. The statement was not unprecedented as a similar one had come from the IDB in relation to the controversy over the now aborted hiring of the former New York Police Chief Mr Bernard Kerik. Would our MPs and the relevant parliamentary oversight committee be able to elicit information on the circumstances of Mr Singh’s appointment? It doesn’t appear likely.
The government also stands accused of interfering in the process of selecting a new Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana. Months after this process descended into the murky depths of the unknown, neither the Chairman of the UG Council, Dr Prem Misir, who is a functionary in the Office of the President, nor the Ministry of Education have anything at all to say on what decisions have been made on the vice-chancellorship at the institution of highest learning in the country.
What a bizarre state of affairs. With the tenure of the incumbent, Dr Rose over, the university community is in the dark about who the new vice-chancellor is or if the government’s favoured candidate Dr Rose will return. It is this type of impenetrability and cloudiness over government’s dealings that will lead to the negative perceptions that have been generated.
It will be interesting to see whether clear answers are provided on who put up those tasteless billboards on the maritime ruling which seemed only concerned with extolling the virtues of the President. It should be quite easy to determine as they were replicas of similar billboards for the Rio Summit and the World Cup.
There is a growing list of questionable cases dotting the Jagdeo administration which includes the secret Memorandum of Understanding for the Buddy’s Hotel, the genesis of the casino gambling legislation and the swapping of the prime Main Street location of the National Archives for one on Homestretch Avenue.
The breaching of a solemn promise to Parliament to present a flood accounting budget and the later cavalier handling of the transmission of the relevant financial statements to the Office of the Auditor General are acts indicative of the mindset of the administration.
The only way in which this information deficit and absence of transparency can be countered by the public, the opposition and watchdogs is by the operationalising of Freedom of Information legislation. A bill has been tabled by the AFC but neither of the two major parties seems to have the appetite for it. They will howeve
r be tested when the legislation confronts them in the upcoming session.
So while some of the analyses that the President complained of may well be off the mark, his case has not been helped by the stifling shroud that covers important phalanxes of government business. There is a double jeopardy here for the country.
Under the shroud all kinds of illegal things can happen and in the absence of the relevant information and robust oversight bodies, perceptions – like those presented by TI – will rule.
