– to funding better infrastructure in a ‘green’ Guyana

Dear Editor

THE Green State Development Strategy (GSDS) outlines a better future for Guyana. It’s a future of renewable energy, strong and sustainably built infrastructure, and careful preservation of our extraordinary cultural and natural heritage.
But that future won’t come cheap.

From a new bridge across the Demerara River, to solar-powered farms and coastal sea walls and long-awaited upgrades to the Linden-Lethem road, the price tag for Guyana’s needs has never been greater.

Funding from the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, Norway and others has been available, but it is often insufficient, slow to materialise, and comes with bureaucratic strings attached. It also leaves Guyana reliant on the charity of others to fund many of its most important needs; charity that might not always be available in uncertain economic times.

Oil revenues could change all that, but only if we act responsibly; enforcing and embracing our existing contract, building up our capacity for responsible revenue management, and moving forward with production as swiftly and safely as possible.
Conservative estimates from the International Monetary Fund put the initial government income from the offshore oil development at US$270M by 2020, and rising into the billions within a matter of a few years. Current estimates of our offshore oil reserves place us alongside some of the world’s wealthiest oil producers in terms of barrels of recoverable oil per citizen.

That’s an amount that could transform our country; enough to pay for a bridge, a road, a port and more. That revenue could help Guyana become exactly the kind of nation that the GSDS envisions, if handled carefully.

That means taking a thoughtful look at what other oil-producing countries have done right: setting up Sovereign Wealth Funds, ensuring that the sanctity of contracts is respected, investing in a diverse, sustainable, and equitable economy, and building solid infrastructure and institutions.

Smart investments in infrastructure could benefit every industry and every citizen. These investments should last decades, leaving Guyana with valuable assets, even if oil revenues eventually decline. We can remake our economic future and set a course for long-term sustainability.

A modern deep-sea port would make Guyana’s agricultural and mining exports substantially more profitable and create opportunities for higher ‘tech’ manufacturing. New roads and bridges would make trade easier, and link the economies of remote interior communities to Georgetown and the coast.

Seawalls and flood control systems would reduce the impacts of vicious storm surges on vulnerable low-lying areas such as Georgetown — something that is becoming more important every year, and is one of the most critical but highest-cost priorities in the GSDS.

Oil production could also help achieve the GSDS’s goal of modernising our dirty fuel oil power plants by switching to lower-emission natural gas, which is widely regarded as the perfect counterpart to renewable forms of energy. We will need some source of power when the sun is not shining, after all.

Meanwhile, oil money could pay for exactly the kind of forest conservation initiatives that Guyana currently relies on charity to fund. We are already a world leader in forest conservation, and a destination for biologists and ecologists from around the world. We should seek to double our efforts.

Imagine what millions more in funding could do to make Guyana not just a destination for foreign scientists, but a place that had the money and institutions to educate thousands of its own.
These kinds of investments would entice the young and educated of our society to stay here to help enrich Guyana, while drawing educated Guyanese back from abroad, and improving the business climate enough that future generations never leave in the first place.

Every year spent arguing about tearing up a contract and shopping around for a better one is a year without hundreds of millions in revenue for Guyana, and a greater risk that companies will simply seek oil elsewhere.
Building a better and more sustainable Guyana is a bold, ambitious and expensive vision. But thanks to oil revenues, it’s one that is finally within reach.

Yours
ANDREW MCBEAN
Guyanese entrepreneur