Barama Company Limited (BCL) yesterday said that the characterization of the company by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund is inaccurate and not based on complete information.
On Monday, Norway’s Ministry of Finance announced that it has excluded Malaysian company, Samling, which is Barama’s parent company and two Israeli companies from the portfolio of the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG).
“The decision to exclude these companies from the GPFG is based on the Council on Ethics assessment that they are contributing to or are themselves responsible for grossly unethical activity,” Minister of Finance Sigbjorn Johnsen had said in a statement.
“The Council on Ethics has assessed Samling Global, and concluded that the company’s forest operations in the rainforests of Sarawak and Guyana contribute to illegal logging and severe environmental damage.
I have therefore chosen to follow the recommendation of the Council on Ethics and exclude the company from the GPFG’s investment portfolio,” he had said.
In a statement yesterday, Barama referred to an article in this newspaper headlined ‘Norway fund shuts out Barama parent co. over forest breaches’.
In the statement, Mohindra Chand, Head of Corporate Affairs and Forests Planning at Barama, said that the company had invited the Norwegians to visit their operations “for first-hand knowledge of our business and to clarify issues, but with no response”.
He said that the company remains committed to the continual improvement of its sustainable forest management processes and practices within the laws under which it operates. “However, it is not our policy to comment on the decisions of investors”, he said.
Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud on Tuesday rejected the Norwegian report and denied that BCL operations have resulted in serious damage to the environment. In a statement, he said that the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC), which monitors BCL’s operations continuously “has found little evidence to substantiate such a position.”
However, he admitted that “some deficiencies” were identified in Barama’s operations.
