President David Granger says the Memorandum of Understanding on Energy Sector Cooperation to be signed between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago is not a secret document and he will ask that it be made public.
“It is not a secret document. It is just an agreement to co-operate,” he said.
Asked after yesterday’s swearing in of the Chairman of the Police Complaints Authority at State House, Carmichael Street, Georgetown, if he was prepared to make the document public as requested by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Granger said, “Yes. It is just a MOU.”
He noted that T&T Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley should have arrived in Guyana yesterday morning for the signing “but for some reason or the other it was delayed.”
The document, he said, was vetted by the Department of Energy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Asked when the signing will take place, Granger said, “A new date has not been set.”
On September 5, the GCCI President, Deodat Indar called on Government to stay its hands in the signing until it had a clear idea of what the MoU entails. Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo also asked that the provisions of the MoU be made public.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge in a statement last Friday said, the signing of the MoU was “consistent with our rights and obligations within CARICOM and in keeping our relationship with Trinidad and Tobago.”
The energy sector cooperation MOU, he said, is one of two agreements Guyana shared with T&T. The first, which was renewed earlier this year, he said, is a platform to discuss all bilateral cooperation and the second to be signed is for cooperation in oil and gas.
The first agreement, the “Framework Agreement” which was signed in 1999 and expired in 2009, was renewed for a ten-year period in December 2017.
The MoU on oil and gas, Greenidge said “is more for co-operation on a governance level than it is an invitation to Trinidadian companies, which already enjoy the rights to establish businesses here within the framework of free movement of goods and services under the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.”
T&T Energy Minister, Franklin Khan had revealed Guyana’s and T&T intention to sign the MoU during an interview with Stabroek News.
