This is according to unaudited statements that the newspaper has seen recently. Further, the success of the collection campaign came amidst the prevailing economic downturn, heavy losses in the rice sector and widespread flooding in 2005 affecting all business sectors.
In 2004, then president Bharrat Jagdeo tasked a small group of persons with winding up the operations of the GNCB within a three-year period. In order to achieve this, the management looked an enhancing organizational capacity and implementing actions that eventually resulted in a sustained collection rate of $300 million per year.
Those strategies included implementing effective management of the consolidated loans portfolio, enhanced management of the entity and an effective litigation policy that produced acceptable results. According to information that this newspaper has seen, the loan portfolio decreased from 1,451 loans in December 2004 to 366 loans in December 2009.
“GNCB has for all intents and purposes wrapped up,” Keith Burrowes, who had been appointed general manager of the management team, said when contacted by Stabroek News. “The [then] president had asked me some time ago to get involved in wrapping up the entity. There were a number of loans that were given out and not repaid because of one reason or another,” he said, noting that he is no longer at the helm of that entity.
Burrowes said the person who served as general manager prior to him was in the position for a number of years and in terms of performance did not meet anywhere close to the amounts that were outstanding.
“I would consider the amounts of money expended, even though it may have been a grant of US$1 million that was used to pay this individual and a few other contractors, a waste of resources.
However it was linked to conditionalities of the World Bank and other international financial institutions,” he said. Burrowes said once permission was granted from those above him, he would be prepared to make a report on the wrapping up and debt recovery of GNCB public.
He said when the National Bank of Industry and Commerce (now Republic Bank Guyana Limited) took over GNCB, it did not take over the loans that GNCB had outstanding. “It was determined that these loans could not be recovered for several reasons,” he said.
“Now for the short time that I was there, a debt recovery policy document was prepared and a number of the persons who did not repay their loans are in front of the courts now,” he said.
He said while a number of persons have been sent off from GNCB, “we still have a small team of experienced persons and they with other experts are currently speaking with President Donald Ramotar with regard to a proposal for the establishment of a development bank.”
Burrowes said it was the intention of the government to have such a mechanism in place to recover other monies owned to the government.
