THE affairs of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) were again a feature of this year’s budget debates, and according to Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, while the government agency came about under the aegis of the People’s National Congress (PNC), it is the ruling administration that made it transparent.

Prime Minister Hinds, this past week at the closing of the general policy debate on the 2013 Budget, responded to A Partnership For National Unity (APNU) finance spokesman, Carl Greenidge, who, in his presentation, had termed the activities of NICIL, “off-budget financing.”
Hinds told the House that it is the current administration that introduced legislation to put in place the Policy Paper and Law for “formal procedures for the open and transparent privatisation of the remaining government entities.”
The prime minister used the opportunity to remind the House that in speaking to NICIL and its affairs, “we must position the operations of NICIL against the earlier time when the government had seized the commanding and not so commanding heights of the economy, and at its peak, it is said that government-owned enterprises were responsible for some 85 per cent of all economic activity in our country.”
The prime minister said in that environment, the economy collapsed and the late President Forbes Burnham eventually began to accept that a change of policy could no longer be resisted, and that the various enterprises had to be privatized.
Hinds said that while there is a place for government in the marketplace, particularly in the Guyana context, it should not be at the point where it controls 85 per cent of economic activity.
“I am ready to admit that I encouraged and supported the combination of the Privatization Unit and NICIL, and that combination becoming the lead agency for government in any desired investment in our economy.”

No Laws Being Broken
The Prime Minister was adamant that “no laws are being broken, neither in the operation of NICIL nor any other so-called off-budget transactions.”
Hinds maintained that “Guyanese are better off for having the Privatization Unit/NICIL to act in our economy.”
Meanwhile Hinds also used the opportunity in addressing the budget debate to address the calls being made in support of a reduction in toll at the Berbice Bridge.
Hinds suggested instead that persons using the Berbice River Bridge are better off for having it and paying the existing tolls, “when one thinks of the long delays and uncertainties at the old ferry crossing.”

Unsustainable Tolls
Hinds said that the problem is not the high tolls at the Berbice Bridge. He declared, “I would be bold enough to say what everyone knows, it is not the high tolls at the Berbice Bridge, but the low, highly subsidized, unsustainable tolls at the Demerara Harbour Bridge.”
Hinds told the House that circumstances in the 1970s determined the low, highly subsidized tolls at the Demerara Harbour Bridge, “whilst the Berbice Bridge, built as a public/private partnership, is required to earn enough to pay its way.”
Alliance for Change (AFC) Vice Chairman Moses Nagamootoo, in his presentation to the debate, had called for a subsidy to be instituted for the Berbice Bridge in a bid to reduce its tolls.
Hinds reminded the House; however, that government has maintained a ferry crossing from Blairmont to New Amsterdam, while suggesting also that “we are open to variations which would better meet the needs.”