PRESIDENTIAL Advisor on Governance, Ms Gail Teixeira, informed reporters yesterday at the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President, in Georgetown, that Government will be briefing national stakeholders on the status of the Mazaruni Hydro Development Project on March 19.She said Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, along with their technical people, will interact with the stakeholders.

Government will be moving towards conducting pre-feasibility and feasibility studies on the project, Minister Rodrigues-Birkett informed the National Assembly recently.

The Foreign Affairs Minister was at the time providing an update on the progress of discussions between Guyana and Brazil with regard to the Memorandum of Understanding on Infrastructural Development, which was signed between the two countries on December 5, 2013 with the aim of stimulating projects in the area of hydropower, road development, and construction of a deep-water port.

The MOU established a Guyana-Brazil Joint Technical Group with a mandate to produce proposals for concrete action, as well as timetables for implementation of four projects, to be presented to the Presidents of both states. These projects were: the construction of hydroelectric plants; construction of transmission lines, needed to distribute any energy that will be generated eventually; improvement of the Guyana-Brazil road link; and construction of a deep-water port.

Minister Rodrigues-Birkett informed the National Assembly that after four meetings of the Joint Technical Working Group, a report was submitted, in July 2013, to the presidents of the two states.

Minister Birkett told the House that among the recommendations in the report is that the 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 with respect to hydropower development.
By Telesha Ramnarine