Yesterday’s lead article in the Stabroek News bringing to public attention the unease of economist Tarron Khemraj over what he says may be the political administration’s particular preference for the creation of a specific type of Natural Resource Fund (NRF) for the country’s collectables from the sale of oil will, in all likelihood, not be the last we will hear on this issue. Coming to think of it, what should be done with what is expected to be the healthy amounts that our oil is expected to rake in, over time, is likely to be the subject of protracted and spirited discourse at the national level in the period ahead. There will be points, sooner or later, at which the discourse might turn ugly and will spill over into the political realm.
It would seem that Mr. Khemraj’s immediate concern has to do with what he says is the incumbent political administration’s seeming preference for going down the road taken by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Central Asian Republic that shares land borders with both Russia and China and which was recently ranked 17th among oil producing countries globally.
What Mr Khemraj had to say recently has a bearing on the views expressed recently by Arthur Deakin, Co-Director of an organization known as Americas Market Intelligence Energy Practice in which he too appears to frown on the Government of Guyana’s seeming preference for the Kazakh model for managing the country’s oil funds on the grounds that that approach affords what one might call a certain ‘free and easy’ access to those resources by the government in office.
What makes Mr. Khemraj’s view, coming as it does on the heels of Mr. Deakin’s, a likely trigger for a wider and much more spirited public discourse on the issue, in the future, has everything to do with the fact that our history has not, invariably, reflected a particularly high level of public trust in the preparedness of political office-holders to always exercise a high degree of transparency in the management of state resources. The primary thrust of the Deakin article has to do with what he says is the relatively easy access which government has to the financial resources accruing from oil sales under the system employed in Kazakhstan. This, it would seem, is also Mr. Khemraj’s point insofar as the Government of Guyana’s seeming preference for the Kazakh ‘option’ is concerned.
But those are not necessarily the only salient points in this discourse. Another one has to do with the fact that as a whole, the people of Guyana, who are, collectively, a decidedly interested party, find themselves positioned on the periphery of an issue that is linked to one of the most critical discourses on the development of our country in its history; and yet, in the six-plus years since the first public announcement of a major oil find offshore Guyana was made, no serious attempt has been made at an all-embracing national discourse regarding just how the returns from our oil resources, which we have been anticipating for decades, can be sustainably managed.
One fears that Mr. Khemraj’s “flaying the government,” (as the Stabroek News article puts it,) might precipitate yet another vigorous but ultimately sterile discourse from which the vast majority of Guyanese, on account of our lack of any considerable schooling on matters pertaining to the national management of oil wealth, may be excluded; or that the most we might be able to do is to volunteer spirited but tangential ‘throw-ins’ which will inevitably be unceremoniously deposited on the periphery of the mainstream discourse.
This raises the question as to whether, as a country, we may not have arrived at the option of leaving the matter of the management of our oil revenues entirely in the hands of those who rule which is precisely what obtained – or at least so it appears – in the instance of Kazakhstan and which can have its ugly repercussions.
So that it is not, at this stage, a matter of the validity or otherwise of Mr. Khemraj’s concern that is really the key point, but whether, if, in seeking to move towards a warranted ventilation of what he has to say, it might not be decidedly in the national interest to shift the discourse from the halls of the seemingly better informed, which appears to have become a permanent home for discourses of this kind, into the broader public space where it rightfully belongs.
Both the Deakin article and the more recent Khemraj comment are relevant insofar as what they do is to create the foundation, hopefully, for a significant infusion of public enlightenment into the matter. One makes this point to say that if most of us continue to remain excluded from what ought, correctly, to be a national discourse, then, sooner or later that exclusion might redound to our discomfort or worse.
Frankly, one is far from encouraged by what, at this juncture, does not appear to be a keenness on the part of government, to create an environment in which public enlightenment on the management of the returns from our oil resources becomes significantly enhanced. In this regard it is proceeding down the road of what is either an unfathomable oversight or a deliberate exclusion. It does so at its own likely considerable risk. The necessity for ongoing widespread and comprehensive public education on matters to do with the returns from our oil resources is not a matter to be trifled with as the government should not allow itself to find out after the horses of public forbearance have bolted.
