The Buddy’s International Hotel has been sold to Turkish hotel group ‘Princess’ and an agreement to this effect has already been signed, according to an informed source.
The hotel had been developed in time for World Cup Cricket last year at a total cost of US$12M. CEO of the hotel Omprakash ‘Buddy’ Shivraj remained tight-lipped when this newspaper contacted him yesterday for confirmation on the buyers or investors.
A management team comprising a number of South African nationals is already in place at the hotel in preparation for the change in branding.
According to various travel websites, the Princess group has a number of hotels around the world and they are known for reflecting local culture and being especially accommodating to children. It is not uncommon for the group’s hotels to have the word ‘Princess’ included as part of the name, while the other part of the name is usually indicative of the location.
This newspaper understands that some issues had to be worked out before government gave approval since the land on which the hotel is built was leased from the government.
“That is why when your newspaper asked if Buddy’s hotel was for sale, the owner answered ‘no’ because it had already been sold,” said the source.
The hotel was built with funding that included five mortgages from the Guyana Bank of Trade and Industry (GBTI) and the $165.7M advance on the sale of rooms to the Government of Guyana.
The Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport has since paid over to the Ministry of Finance the sum of US$598,000 – approximately $119.6M – of the $165.7M that the government had advanced to the hotel. The remainder of the sum of $46.1M was said to have been recovered through room nights at the hotel.
An opposition member of the Public Accounts Com-mittee (PAC) of Parliament Winston Murray said that there was no problem with the sale of the hotel once monies lent by the government were repaid and the due diligence on the foreign investors checked out. He said that the arrangement for a sale would be a private transaction. However, he was still concerned about the lack of disclosures that surrounded the entire project, from its conception to now.
“They didn’t tell taxpayers when they were making the loan,” he said, adding that whatever was owed to the government should be collected before the signing of any agreement.
He said that he hoped this transaction didn’t have the same kinds of connotations that surrounded some other projects being undertaken in the city.
“The government should put [this transaction] in the public domain. Taxpayers have to be informed by the government on its efforts to secure monies lent to Buddy’s,” said Murray.
He said that since the terms of the agreement between the government and Shivraj had been kept secret, it was hard to assess whether or not the hotelier was making a killing on the land on which the hotel stood. “Is he allowed to make a windfall?” Murray asked. The growing interest in Buddy’s may have less to do with the hotel itself and more to do with the casino to be located in the hotel, which should become operational after the appropriate Gaming Authority comes into being.
An amendment to the Gambling Prevention Act in January 2007 facilitated the establishment of such a Gaming Authority but it has yet to be operationalised.
