In its action seeking Judicial Review against the Local Content Secretariat (LCS) for certification, Ramps Logistics is contending that it has satisfied the statutory requirements and therefore cannot see why its application is still pending.
Ramps, whose parent company is Trinidadian, argues that it is entitled to be issued a certificate of registration and to be entered into the Local Content Register in accordance with Section 6 of the Local Content Act.
It is against this background that Ramps Logistics (the Applicant) is asking a Court to declare as being unlawful, the decision of the Minister of Natural Resources and/or the Secretariat made four months ago—on June 8th—refusing to grant the certification.
Ramps also wants the Court to declare “unreasonable, unlawful and arbitrary,” what it says is the Minister’s and/or the Director of the Secretariat’s refusal to reconsider that decision; while adding that they have misconstrued and misapplied Sections of the Act.
The move to the court comes close to two months after Ramps submitted additional documents to the Secretariat where its application for certification remains pending. Ramps Logistics has been pushing for its certification in order to bid for a renewal of a contract with businesses supporting oil and gas activities.
Earlier this month Local Content Secretariat spokeswoman, Makaila Prince told this newspaper that the application for certification of the Company—whose parent company is in Trinidad and Tobago—remains in queue in the review process.
Ramps Logistics, which started operating in Guyana in 2013 won the contract to provide freight forwarding and supply chain management services to ExxonMobil Guyana in 2018. It had responded to a public tender for the project.
Under the existing contract the company facilitates logistics for vessels between Guyana and Trinidad, customs brokerage, clearing of equipment and cargo coming through local ports among other functions.
With the contract up for renewal by November of this year, they stand a chance of not being in a position to bid since they were initially denied their local content certification.
Other companies, which provide services similar to Ramps have already received their local content certification.
The Local Content Secretariat outlines documentation to be submitted by a Guyanese national or Guyanese company registering with the Secretariat in support of their application. According to the agency’s mandate, it “aims to ensure the prioritization of Guyanese nationals and Guyanese companies in the procurement of goods and services for the enhancement of the value chain of the petroleum sector and to enable local capacity development.”
Ramps says in its action that “as a Guyanese Company [it] is entitled to be issued with a Certificate of Registration” which it is currently being denied, in breach of Section 6 of the Act.
Ramps amended its application after the LCS denied it certification. Director of the LCS Martin Pertab, in his letter explaining the rationale behind the decision, had identified a number of areas in which the company failed to satisfy the requirements for certification.
In the June 27th correspondence to the Company, in response to an application made on April 12th, Pertab stated, “Upon a review of that application, the information submitted were found to be insufficient for a proper compliance evaluation to be done by the Secretariat in accordance with the requirements of the Act.”
Pertab’s letter, seen by this newspaper, identified a number of grounds on which Ramps’ application was denied, among which were questionable documents which did not clearly state the amendments to incorporation and the failure to have their executive board of directors be 75 per cent Guyanese.
In a brief statement after the rejection of the application, Ramps Logistics said that it was looking forward to working together with the LCS to promptly resolve this situation. However, when the company submitted its amendments, its attorneys argued that the rationale provided by the LCS was not in keeping with the powers conferred on it. Writing directly to Pertab, the law firm of Satram & Satram contended that Ramps Logistics has at all times satisfied the requirements of the Act for registration as a local company.
The Company in its new documents provided to the Secretariat, shared a copy of the resignation of Rudy Rampersad, the Notice of Change of Directors, the Notice of Change of Secretary, and the relevant Resolution of the Board of Directors.
“In the spirit of an early resolution of the issues which were raised in your letter, our client has complied with all your demands even though, in our view, your requests are outside of the parameters of the powers vested in the Secretariat under the Act… We anticipate that the registration would now be granted without delay,” the letter concluded.
In its action, Ramps want the Court to quash the decision of June 8th, 2022 denying it certification; and for the Minister and/or the Director of the LCS to be compelled to grant that certification.
In the alternative, the Company is asking the Court that it orders that the decision be reconsidered and a further order directing that there be liberty to apply damages to be assessed in a separate hearing, once its substantive reliefs would have been considered.
Ramps says that the Minister, the Director of the LCS and the Attorney General who are all listed as Respondents, took the decision to deny its certification, while at the same time granting certificates to “similarly structured companies and competitors.”
It is the further contention of the Company that the Respondents “knew” that their decision was likely to severely affect its business and that losses would be suffered, but yet they failed to reconsider its application in a timely manner.
On this point Ramps through its attorneys says that it is not only entitled to damages, but to all the reliefs it is seeking.
The matter will be called before acting Chief Justice Roxane George SC tomorrow.
