When this newspaper spoke with Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) Ronald Webster seeking an official private sector comment on the alleged recent transgressions of Chinese investor Bai Shan Lin, he told us he was not ideally positioned to pronounce on the issue, as he did not have any pertinent information at his disposal.
Nonetheless, Mr Webster made the point, in principle, that he believed, first, that foreign investors should be required to live up to the conditions that inhere in their investment agreements and, secondly, that investors, be they local or foreign, should have access to a level playing field.
To take the first issue first, that is, the requirement that foreign investors live up to the conditions of the agreements which they sign with the government of Guyana, the mind boggles as to how on earth Bai Shan Lin could have been engaging in activities of the nature reported – mining sand and laterite – without the authorities quickly discovering the transgression and halting it. One might well ask as well whether the fact that it took three Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) cease-work orders to bring Bai Shan Lin’s pursuits to an end does not speak volumes about the authority of the GGMC.
In the matter of the second issue, there is really nothing to disagree with. Of course local and foreign investors should share the same playing field, at least as far as the requirement of following regulations and being mindful of the laws of the land are concerned.
One would have imagined too that Natural Resources and the Environment Minister Robert Persaud would have had something to say about the matter some time ago. What we have instead is a pronouncement from the GGMC that Bai Shan Lin would be charged since it had no authority to mine either sand or laterite; a pronouncement that will almost certainly cause the GGMC to lose face if it is decided by the higher authorities that the extent of the Bai Shan Lin investment requires that the matter of the illegal mining be settled in a manner that circumvents prosecution.
From everything that we have been told Bai Shan Lin represents a massive multi-sectoral investment though it is its 960,000 hectares forest holding that has attracted both civic and environmental attention. One recalls too that last January the company made a rather huge public relations show of its commitment to provide 10,000 jobs for Guyanese, including several in the forestry and manufacturing sectors.
If indeed – and the evidence would appear to exist – it is the case that Bai Shan Lin has been engaged in unauthorised mining of sand and laterite then it is difficult to see how, in its capacity as a foreign investor and a guest, it could engage in such a pursuit without some sort of official permission. So that at the very least we are due some kind of explanation that can, presumably, be facilitated through a swift official enquiry.
Given the questions that have already been raised about the transparency of various other forestry agreements with other foreign investors it would do the government’s image further harm if this episode were to be allowed to disappear quietly. After all, the authorities must surely know that the manner in which governments conduct themselves in their dealings with foreign investors has become an important barometer used by important international organisations including the IMF and the World Bank to measure standards of governance. This means, of course, that sooner or later the Bai Shan Lin transgression might come back to haunt the administration.
At the domestic level, occurrences like the Bai Shan Lin episode only serve to fuel existing fires of suspicion regarding the nature of the relationships between the political administration and foreign investors which, invariably, have a knock-on effect on the relationship between certain investors and the citizenry as a whole. Rather than simply frown on what can sometimes be undesirable public outbursts against investments of one type or another, what the government needs to do is to ensure that agreements between itself and every investor can withstand such scrutiny as it is subjected to. Addressing the Bai Shan Lin transgression would do both the image of the administration and the country’s image as an investment destination a generous measure of good.
