Dear Editor,
Guyanese are indebted to Stabroek News and the Times of India for the news that some months ago, the Jagdeo administration signed away more than one million eight hundred thousand acres of land to an Indian businessman who plans to cut and ship logs to India to make furniture. As a Guyanese with no expertise in any of the related fields a number of questions immediately spring to my mind and I therefore write to outline the facts as I understand them and to ask the Government of Guyana to urgently confirm or deny them:
1. Mr V G Siddhartha, who owns a chain of coffee shops across India, has been granted a 30-year lease over pristine forest land subject to the Guyana-Norway forest conservation agreement. Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud is reported as confirming two parcels of land amounting in total to 1,823,139 acres. The larger area confirmed is situated in the Upper Essequibo-Corentyne-North Rupununi District while a marginally smaller area is located in the Bartica Triangle.
2. According to the Times of India report, the varieties to be exported to India include Greenheart, Purpleheart, Wallaba and Bullet Wood, on which there is reportedly an export ban. The royalty that Mr Siddhartha will pay Guyana is not clear, nor do we know what tax and other concessions, including tax holidays, have been given to the businessman.
3. According to Minister Persaud the government has received from the businessman approximately US$3.524 million, most of which has already been spent, apparently to help meet liabilities owed to policyholders of Clico (Guyana) because one parcel of the land had been controlled by a Clico-related company.
4. The land assigned to the businessman represents more than 4% of the country’s total land mass. It is the equivalent of 2,889 times Greater Georgetown and nearly double the size of Iwokrama. To get control of the land, the businessman paid the princely sum of G$394 per acre or less than two United States dollars. There was no competitive bidding.
5. Once Mr Siddhartha begins extraction of the logs, the Guyana-Norway Agreement will be placed at risk since the proposed rate of extraction can cause the country’s committed limit to be exceeded. With the agreement providing for penalties for extraction above the agreed limit, Guyana could very well suffer more in penalties to the Norwegians than any money it stands to receive from Mr Siddhartha.
What are the long-term benefits of this deal to Guyana? As one aspect of this, how does the government justify exporting logs with no value added in Guyana? How does a deal of this nature relate to the LCDS – put to us as a long-term, visionary approach to Guyana’s development?
In the interests of transparency and to help us all understand the facts on the ground, I also ask the government to immediately publish a full-page map of the country with all the forest concessions owned and information on who owns each.
Yours faithfully,
Andaiye