Prime Minister Sam Hinds has taken umbrage at two headlines appearing one day apart speaking of the issuing of cable licences in Guyana favouring friends of the administration and the methodology utilised in other countries for the allocation of such licences.
On April 18, 2013, Stabroek News carried an article headlined, ‘Jamaica seeking big bucks for cable licences in public auction- what did Guyana get?’ on April 19, 2013, this newspaper carried another report headlined, ‘Cable operators Yong, Persaud not paying anything –PM –cites small population size’.
Hinds in a statement to the Government Information Agency said that in the current Guyana situation, the first headline engenders comparisons with the granting of the radio licences by outgoing President Bharrat Jagdeo in November 2011, with licences from cable. Hinds in the statement acknowledged that in the body of the article, there is mention of the grants – not in 2011 but in 2010 to Brian Yong and Vishok Persaud.
“The headline of April 19 is a distortion of what the Prime Minister said when he was approached for a comment on the April 18 headline. He stated that when someone next to him read the headline, of April 19, ‘Cable Operators Yong, Persaud not paying anything’ he asked the PM, ‘Why are you charging other people and you’re not charging Yong and Persaud?’ That was the intended message of the headline. People respond to headlines; they hardly go on to read the full article,” Hinds said.
“The first two paragraphs of the article do go on to put a fairer and more accurate position of what the PM said: that governments collect revenue from telecoms operators in a variety of ways and auction is one of the ways, but the Guyana Government after reviewing the matter, chose not to go the way of auction. No one has paid an auction charge in Guyana. Jamaica has not received anything yet: many times when auctions are held offers are less than expected,” Hinds said in the GINA report.
According to GINA, the Prime Minister stressed that the important thing is consistency in applying the same schedule of fees and taxes to every telecoms operator. “Further that a telecoms operator recovers all the payments to a government from the receipts from their customers. Customers eventually pay the auction prices,” said Hinds.
“It is with this awareness that up-front auction money comes with the need of its recovery (from) the market that the Government did not take the option of going by way of auction, but by a combination of annual fees as the telecoms operator grows,” he said.
Neither Hinds nor the government has provided any information on what has been paid or is being paid by Yong and Persaud for the licence.
According to GINA, Hinds said studies across states and countries show that the average Government revenue from telecoms operators, through a variety of means – auctions and annual fees- ranges from 6% to 16% of the gross receipts from customers.
Hinds said that Guyana may still be considered a start-up situation with little records of “big bucks” being made in the Guyanese market.
“The PM pointed to how Anthony Vieira and Rex McKay got TV going in Guyana and acknowledged their pioneering spirit. Very little, if anything was paid in those early years and the PM has no quarrel with that,” the GINA release said.
He said that when the PPP/C came to government in 1992, others came seeking to initiate TV services, intimating that they had felt uneasy about venturing forth in the preceding regime.
“As the PM held open the door for new entrants, he heard from the earlier group that the advertisement market for Guyana was too small for others to come in…Interestingly, ingeniously, innovatively, CN Sharma looking for a revenue stream, introduced death announcement, an innovation that first generated much mirth and laughter but which eventually everyone turned to,” Hinds stated.
“Our Guyanese market is indeed small in number and still not rich: our choices must be in accord,” he added in the GINA report.
