Government has a double standard on the sanctity of contracts and this is evident when the agreements with the Berbice Bridge Company Inc (BBCI) and Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) and partners are compared, columnist Christopher Ram says.
“Guyana’s new oil czars have carefully managed their public comments, implicitly protecting the Esso Petroleum Agreement from the barest hint of a criticism. Unwittingly, Dr. Mark Bynoe, the top czar, helped to feed the perception of double standards by which foreigners and locals are judged when he was asked about the stabilization clause at a press conference he hosted,” Ram posited in his ‘The road to first oil’ column, in last Friday’s Stabroek News.
Further, he adds, “For him, the stabilisation clause, which effectively cedes Guyana’s parliamentary sovereignty, is necessary because our “complementary legislation may not be as robust as it ought to be”. Did our Ministers not realise that “complementary” factors were the same reasons why the Bridge Company investors received special tax concessions?”
The chartered accountant and attorney at law said that three years ago his accounting company, Ram & McRae, submitted proposals to the Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan for the resolution of the impasse over the Berbice Bridge with recommendations but the minister never acted on them.
He points also to the claims by BBCI that it had made several approaches to Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson to have the matter of tolls and bridge finances addressed but was ignored. However, Ram notes, that Patterson had no problem visiting ExxonMobil’s Houston, Texas office with four other government ministers on a trip that they have to date not properly explained.
“The Bridge Company has disclosed that it made several approaches to the Minister but was ignored. Yet, this same Minister, along with the four other Ministers comprising President (David) Granger’s Quartet, had no problem in going to ExxonMobil’s Houston’s Office for reasons that are yet to be explained to the Guyana public. If this is not a demonstration of one standard for locals and another for foreigners, it would be nice to know what is,” he stated.
And even as he laced into Patterson for his seeming bellicose attitude with BBCI , he believes that Patterson, and by extension government, should have seized the opportunity to interface with the BBCI as several local companies have invested in that venture; a major one being the country’s National Insurance Scheme. Instead, he thinks that government preferred to use the bridge as a political tool because it knew that one of the principal investors is tied to the opposition.
“The Government’s apparent obsession with the Ramroop Group’s involvement in the Bridge Company blinds it to the fact that there are more than twenty other domestic investors in that company, including Pension Schemes, Trade Unions, financial institutions and commercial operators. In fact, the single majority interest in the Bridge Company is held by the National Insurance Scheme while the Chairman of the Board of the Bridge Company is the Chairman of the NIS,” he notes.
Earlier this month, Patterson announced the temporary takeover of the Berbice Bridge following a tolls dispute with BBCI.
Complex
Pointing to an October 18th piece that he had written, titled ‘Complex for the white man’ where he then had discussed the Minister of Foreign Affairs’ positive comments on investment bank, Merrill Lynch and facilitating a meeting with it on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly meeting, Ram said the behaviour of Patterson and the government continued.
“Recent developments have lent an aura of prescience about that column as we witnessed and contrasted the arrogance and unlawful behaviour of Minister David Patterson to the Berbice Bridge Company Limited, to the “softly, softly”, overly respectful attitude to ExxonMobil by the Government,” he said.
Ram believes that government’s and Patterson’s stance on the bridge matter is poorly timed as not only the “economy continues on its sluggish path while tax revenues, counter-cyclically, increase” but that the widely publicized World Bank Doing Business Index shows “Guyana slipping a significant eight places in 2017 after a gain of sixteen places in 2016”. He said that “Ministers do not seem to appreciate the harm they are inflicting on this country because of arrogance, incompetence and inaction”.
Head of the Department of Energy Dr. Bynoe and his British Advisor Matthew Wilks were not spared by Ram who condemned their public defence of the controversial 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) the APNU+AFC government had signed with EEPGL and partners.
“Dr. Bynoe, who is a newcomer to petroleum, was also defensive – again implicitly – of the post-discovery 2016 Petroleum Agreement signed by the Government giving control to Esso over a huge area of offshore Guyana spanning from Suriname to Venezuela. In his public comments, Bynoe has been particularly careful to avoid any comments on the 2016 Agreement, preferring to deal with important but softer issues such as corrupt behaviour for which Guyana has boasted it has signed on to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI); nebulously talking about the evolution and the “contextualisation” of the Exxon Agreement, whatever that means, and future licensing rounds,” Ram stated.
“The hypocrisy assumes new heights however in the pronouncements by Bynoe’s Oil and Gas Advisor Matthew Wilks, whose responsibility it has been disclosed, is in contract administration and management. Wilks, in his first public foray, decided to lecture Guyanese about the sanctity of contracts, revealing to us that “investors are watching what is happening with contracts and the whole Guyanese approach to the sanctity of contracts” and that if we start unilaterally trying to change contracts, we will frighten investors. I find such comments patronising and insulting and never thought we would see the return to our country of such condescension,” he added.
But when it comes to local companies, Ram laments that government follows a hardline approach while foreign companies gets more accommodation. “For reasons that are as clear as they are obvious, the same yardstick does not apply to indigenous investors,” he said.
