Dear Editor,
You reported that the Chinese transnational logger Bai Shan Lin is being allowed to continue its rapacious unsustainable logging of furniture and flooring timbers for export as unprocessed logs to the company’s factories in China (‘Baishanlin will be allowed to continue exporting logs amid revamping – Trotman’, SN, November 12). This company is partly owned by a Chinese government company (State-Owned Enterprise; see www.globaltimber.org.uk/guyana.htm ).
It has been in Guyana for a decade. It has made repeated promises of inward investment and value-addition, which it has also broken repeatedly. Bai Shan Lin earned at least US$20 million from the export of wamara timber logs for flooring in 2013 alone (39,000 m3). It has been receiving foreign direct investment tax and import duty concessions from Guyana for this decade. And we are expected to believe that it cannot afford to install even one mill for log processing?
Could you remind this company and the APNU+AFC coalition government of the manifesto commitments published just a few months ago? – “will appoint a group of experts to undertake an in-depth review of all major contracts entered into or approved by the Government of Guyana and entities such as NICIL, GFC and GGMC particularly those pertaining to the disposal of state-owned assets” (page 16, Bai Shan Lin logging in State Forests); “will review and strengthen the administration of fiscal concessions and end the concessions to privileged groups” (page 23); “publish the outlines of plans for the expansion of the forestry and forest-based industries sector … focusing on the development potential of value-added manufactured products … end the unlimited export of logs” (page 28).
The European traders based in Hong Kong in the 19th century, who exploited ruthlessly the riches of China, were known as Tai Pans, or ‘Big Shots’. Bai Shanlin is acting in just the same ruthless way in Guyana, in spite of national policies and party political manifestos. How does the current performance of the coalition government square with its commitments to the peoples of Guyana?
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan