Dear Editor,
Earlier this year, President Bharrat Jagdeo shocked the nation when he announced his government was going to dip into public funds and loan 168 million dollars to Buddy and amounts to other private business persons to expedite the completion of their construction projects related to Guyana’s hosting of CWC 2007.
President Jagdeo, in one of his rare fits of righteous indignation, gave Stabroek News a serious tongue lashing for daring to question the whole arrangement. He then explained that Guyana’s image was at stake (apparently inferring that the projects were critical to accommodating and entertaining foreign cricket fans), and went out of his way to assure perturbed taxpayers that the “loan” would be recovered.
CWC 2007 came and went without any immediate preliminary report on how the investment fared. But the Government made another announcement that, in an effort to “recover the balance of the loan” it plans to rent rooms from Buddy’s hotel.
While one could understand transparent Government-private sector working relationships that allow Government to make or guarantee loans, the same cannot be said of this specific deal. Government has still not made available to the public how it arrived at the 168 million dollar figure, and Buddy’s has still not made available for public scrutiny how he came by his start-up financing for the hotel or his budgeted estimates (i.e. is there a paper trail that can be verified by the Guyana Revenue Authority and banks from start to finish?), yet he benefited privately from public funds. He is also before the court on a charge of smuggling fuel.
But while we are addressing this latest backdoor or sweetheart deal we need to also pay attention to another matter. A few years ago, for example, a conglomerate of overseas-based Guyanese business persons made a down payment of US$3 million cash for the acquisition of Guyana Stores Limited.
Was the balance ever paid? (editor’s note: the price was US $6 million; $4 million was paid and legal action has been taken to recover the balance of US $2 million).
Fast forward to the Buddy deal and the question that readily jumps out at us is: Has the PPP regime, in the last fifteen years, ever loaned a Black-owned business in Guyana 168 million dollars?
This issue of ethnic discrimination, though not confined to the business sector, has been constantly pronounced on by critics of this Government, and Government has repeatedly and categorically refuted the pronouncements as wrong. Does the evidence support them?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
Editor’s note
Government also lent money to the owners of the Cacique hotel which is not yet complete who are not Indian Guyanese.
