As best as this newspaper can recall, no businessman, at least in recent memory, has chosen to talk back to government on any issue in quite the manner that Robert Badal has recently. Not that there is any particular merit in the private sector or any individual businessman assuming a hostile posture towards the government for no good reason – as PSC Chairman Ramesh Dookhoo pointed out some time ago. On the other hand, as Mr Badal pointed out in a recent interview, the private sector should not allow itself to feel constrained by any kind of apprehension, real or imagined, in forthrightly bringing to the attention of government such concerns as it believes are injurious to the growth of the sector. To use his exact words “we cannot afford a private sector that is so gripped by fear that it decides to co-operate, whatever the circumstances”. It is, he feels, both the duty and the right of the private sector to speak out when the circumstances so require.
During the recent interview Mr Badal spoke at length on his perception of aspects of the prevailing relationship between the government and the private sector and the full text of the interview was published in the October issue of The Guyana Review which appeared as a pullout from yesterday’s issue of the Stabroek News. This column, therefore does not seek to review the entire interview but rather to comment on why, at least in Mr Badal’s view, we need a strong and independent private sector.
Mr Badal argues that “business creates value and earns a surplus” and, moreover, “sustains a cycle of reinvestment that creates more and more jobs… no government, no institution, should unduly interfere with private sector investment… Since it is only through the private sector that the economy will grow we in the private sector have a particular responsibility to raise our voices against barriers to that growth. There is really no other way.” What Mr Badal is in fact saying is that the conferral on the private sector of the status of ‘engine of growth’ must, of necessity be attended by immunity from counterproductive official intrusion. Otherwise, it ceases be an engine of growth and comes to rely more and more on the powers that be for its momentum.
It is, Mr Badal said, the laws of the land and the institutions set up that administer those laws rather than the political administration of the day that businessmen and women ought to be accountable to. Here, his elaboration dwells in detail on those laws and institutions–like “a Freedom of Information Act;” “an independent Central Bank;” institutionalized rules and regulations that eschew “discrimination in the granting of incentives;” and “a system that ensures that anyone can sue in court and anticipate an outcome based purely on the merits of the case” – which are universal indexes for measuring the conviviality of the business climate in a country. Among other things, Mr Badal is advocating the creation of an institutionalized buffer that places the business sector out of the reach and/or influence of the political directorate.
It is with the poignancy of these pronouncements rather than the source from which they came that this editorial is primarily concerned. Utterances like these are rarely if ever made by Guyanese businessmen, Mr Badal said, “they are concerned, it seems, that if they raise their voices they will be heard and victimized.”
Whether or not you agree with Mr Badal – and the mainstream business community will probably not be inclined to endorse what he says, publicly, anyway – his advocacy of a business sector that is beyond the reach of bureaucrats and politicians goes to the very heart of good governance and unhindered free enterprise. When rules, regulations and institutions that exist for the purpose of creating a framework for the conduct of business become discredited, rendered irrelevant by political disfigurement, influence-pedalling and its ‘spin twin,’ corruption become the order of the day and businessmen and women toe the line and, as Mr Badal puts it, “cooperate, whatever the circumstances.”
