On Friday October 1, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) issued a media release in which it alluded to what it says is the “overwhelming number of infrastructure work which is being handled by foreign-owned companies” against the backdrop of “several complaints from its membership of cases in which they are being bypassed for work in favour of the aforementioned foreign-owned companies.”
Except we entirely misread the intention of the Chamber’s assertion that its members were “being bypassed for work” we find it difficult to come to any other conclusion than that it is asserting (not implying but asserting) that there is some kind of deliberate and prejudiced selectiveness in the process of recruiting contractors for assignments and that its members are being excluded from the process.
If the Chamber believes this to be the case then it must say so directly and it must – even in the absence of Local Content legislation – engage government frontally on the matter of what it sees as its exclusion from the process. There is no iron-clad nexus between Local Content legislation and the inalienable right of suitably qualified Guyanese companies to have access to such oil and gas-related contracts as lie within their ability to properly execute.
In the several months since the country’s oil and gas-related activities have gathered a head of steam there has been a great deal of discourse about the importance of having the local private sector benefit from various on-shore pursuits in instances where it has the capacity to do so competently. Contextually, the GCCI’s media release makes particular reference to “trucking, logistical and other support services which are being operated by foreign-owned companies, particularly as it relates to the oil and gas sector.” It adds that the exclusion is occurring despite the fact of the ‘excluded’ local companies being “commercially competitive and having the technical capability.” Is the Chamber implying that the “exclusion” to which it refers is deliberately discriminatory and that all of the ‘noises’ that we have been making about ensuring that local businesses benefit from such contracts are turning out to be no more than gusts of hot air? If this is what it believes then it must say so.
What the GCCI also does not say in its media release is whether it had made any prior direct and robust approach to government on the matters that are the subject of its missive and if it has done so what the government’s response has been. That needs to be said.
While the point about the need to hasten the advent of Local Content legislation is well taken one feels that an energetic lobby from a concerned GCCI (perhaps weight could be added to such a lobby if it secures the support of the PSC and the GMSA) might well see the government sending more direct and deliberate signals to foreign contractors that it strongly favours a circumstance in which local companies that are manifestly equipped to do so be afforded greater access to contracts that manifestly lie within their capability.
The selection of local companies, one might add, must go beyond the membership of the GCCI. It must extend into the realm of those unaffiliated small businesses that have made demonstrable and in many instances, successful efforts to raise their game. In other words, affiliation to one or another of the mainstream business support organisations must not become iron-clad criteria for companies’ benefitting from contracts that are linked, directly or otherwise, to the pursuits of the oil and gas sector.
While the GCCI, in its release and seemingly in order to strengthen its case with regard to greater access by its members to some categories of on-shore contracts, seeks the tabling in the National Assembly “before the end of the year,” of Local Content legislation, there is, at this time, no telling as to whether or not this will happen. Accordingly, and even in the absence of the tabling of such legislation the government’s hands are not exactly tied in terms of throwing its weight behind a private sector lobby for a more inclusionary approach to some categories. In this regard government has a duty to act assertively to ensure the maximization of contract allocation for local companies and by extension, employment for Guyanese.
For its part, the Chamber’s lobby for the allocation of more contracts to qualified local businesses must also be couched within an assertive advocacy framework that is linked to its official responsibility to push aggressively for such local job-creation opportunities as might potentially accrue to all of the relevant sectors.
What is not desirable is the making of a fuss over the desirability of having more on-shore contracts going to the local private sector in circumstances where medium and small businesses across the sectors as well as the communities across the country are excluded from the opportunity that it affords local businesses as a whole. Here, it is not a matter of seeking to reduce the validity of the GCCI’s recent protestation but drawing attention to the importance of putting its sentiments into a broader, more relevant perspective.
