–Gov’t to meet shortly with local stakeholders on matter

GOVERNMENT will be meeting shortly with local stakeholders to discuss the commissioning of the prerequisite feasibility studies needed to be done with respect to the development of a joint hydropower facility in the Middle and Upper Mazaruni. 

According to Foreign Minister, Ms Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, the proposed meeting is in keeping with a number of arrangements agreed between the Governments of Guyana and Brazil with regard to joining forces on the development of key infrastructural projects here.
She told the National Assembly yesterday, while bringing members up to speed on the proposed project, that on December 5, 2012, Guyana and Brazil had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on infrastructure development with the aim of stimulating projects in four key areas of interest.
That MOU, she said, established a Guyana-Brazil Joint Technical Working Group, with a mandate to produce proposals for concrete actions, as well as timetables for the implementation of four projects, namely: The construction of hydro-electric plants; construction of transmission lines needed to distribute the energy to be generated eventually; improvement of the Guyana-Brazil road link; and the construction of a deep-water port.
After four meetings of the Joint Technical Working Group, three of which were held in Georgetown, and another in Boa Vista, the group submitted its report to both President Donald Ramotar of Guyana and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil last July.
In that report, she said, the Guyana-Brazil Joint Working Group had made several recommendations with respect to the proposed projects, whereby in terms of the Linden-Lethem road, it was recommended that an engineering design of the road be completed in order to advance the project.
With respect to hydropower development, the Group recommended that pre-feasibility and feasibility studies be carried out at two sites in the Middle and Upper Mazaruni in order to make a final determination on the way forward.
Concerning the development of a deep-water port, Minister Birkett reported that the Group recognised that though separate, the road and port projects are interrelated, because the latter will be dependent on goods coming out of Brazil, mainly the city of Manaus. The Group reportedly estimated that this route will reduce time and costs associated with export from the north of Brazil.
It was suggested that if there is positive movement with the road and hydropower development, there will be automatic interest in the port by the private sector.
She said that both Presidents Ramotar and Rousseff endorsed the report, and then approved the establishment of a Joint Commission for the development of infrastructure projects in Guyana, which would monitor the progress of the projects agreed on.
This Commission, whose work is ongoing, is being chaired on the Guyana side by Ambassador Elisabeth Harper.
According to Minister Birkett, efforts at joint collaboration between Guyana and Brazil are not new, having commenced soon after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1968. She said that several Memoranda of Understanding have since been signed by successive Governments.
She said that the latest development is that the Government of Guyana will in the next few weeks commence briefings with the parties represented in the National Assembly as well as other stakeholders with respect to the feasibility and pre-feasibility studies which are required for the proposed Mazaruni hydro.
Those to be consulted will include the communities in the Middle and Upper Mazaruni. Government will also be briefing the media.
“Needless to say,” she said, “these are pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, and no decision will be taken until these studies have been completed.”

(By Clifford Stanley)