One of the articles published in this week’s issue of the Stabroek Business addresses the efforts which we stated are being made by Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-INVEST) Dr Peter Ramsaroop and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugh Todd, to draw attention to the government’s efforts, through the vehicles of their respective portfolios, to create a climate more convivial to attracting foreign investment. The vast majority of the article addresses remarks made by Dr Ramsaroop about the ongoing efforts by GO-INVEST to raise its game, so to speak.
It must be made clear at the outset that there exists no persuasive evidence that, over the years of its existence the accomplishments of GO-INVEST have even remotely matched presumed expectations. Indeed, public opinion on the entity, including the opinion of some of the would-be investors themselves is that engagements with GO-INVEST are often mired in burdensome bureaucracy that frequently ends in would-be investors leaving the country frustrated, having transformed their GO-INVEST experience into a macrocosmic view of Guyana. Frankly, there is a school of thought, which, over time, has posited that GO-INVEST might even have been as much a hindrance as a help where attracting investment is concerned.
One of the reasons for this has been a lack of clarity as to where the authority of this agency starts and where it ends. Attempts to invest in Guyana can sometimes be tedious and convoluted matters, there being no real clarity regarding the parameters of GO-INVEST. There have been cases in which some investors have been able to circumnavigate the agency and have their matters expedited through political channels. That, in itself, says something about the extent of GO-INVEST’s authority.
This circumstance apart, there has always been a question mark over the extent to which GO-INVEST has been able to attract meaningful investment into the country on a sustained basis. That has to do, one feels, with its skills deficiencies and to limits to its understanding of the essentials of treating with overseas investors in circumstances where investments can make a difference to the country’s economy.
What the current CEO of GO-INVEST has been doing in the short period since he has been in office is no different to what his predecessors have done He has been ‘talking up’ the role that GO-INVEST can play. The problem that Dr Ramsaroop faces, however, is that this approach has been repetitive and almost certainly, redundant. Not only does GO-INVEST have to be revamped to afford it more autonomy (by this, one means its removal from frequent political intervention), but it also has to be professionalised and equipped with the competence levels to serve the purpose for which it was intended. The fact that successive political administrations have failed (or perhaps made no attempt) to revamp GO-INVEST in the face of manifest evidence that it is neither suitably staffed nor substantively empowered to serve its paraded purpose, has left us saddled with what, in its present state, is a near purposeless entity, given our presumed expectations regarding its role in ‘capturing’ foreign investment.
The Stabroek Business has already commented on quite a few occasions on the economic diplomacy issue. As we understand it, there is an attempt here to provide an altogether unaccustomed role for the Foreign Ministry in areas like investment promotion and the expansion of markets for the country’s goods and services abroad. Whilst we have noted the public pronouncements emanating from Takuba Lodge about the expansion of its diplomatic reach into the Near East, Far East and other regions (successive political administrations have been playing this tune for quite a few years), there does not exist to this day, a shred of evidence that the recurring narrative has materialised into reality, even in the slightest.
Rather than repetitively singing the same redundant tune about the significant expansion of our extant diplomatic effort into the economic realm, a pipe dream at this stage, we would do far better to run our external relations on separate tracks, one of them concerned with what one might call political issues and the other concerned with business, investments and matters of that nature. The idea of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as presently structured, taking on, in its present state, substantive responsibility for cultivating/engaging external investment prospects, at this juncture, is simply not on.
