– says T&T economist, hails GSDS as a good developmental strategy

By Vishani Ragobeer

TRINIDADIAN Economist, Dr. Roger Hosein, has urged all Guyanese to focus on safeguarding the long-term renewable energy security of the country despite now becoming an oil-producing nation.

Speaking to the Guyana Chronicle recently, the economist noted when a country begins garnering revenues from an oil and gas industry, there is a tendency to “ignore green” and “ignore renewable (energy)”. Instead, he highlighted, fossil fuel consumption is increased, facilitated by fossil fuel subsidies.

“Guyana has to be careful of going exactly the route that it does not want to go,” Dr. Hosein said, adding: “This will require academia in Guyana, civil society and the media to continuously lobby and keep the State in order so that they do not pursue interventions that compromise the long-term renewable energy security of Guyana as compared to its non-renewable energy security.”

Dr. Hosein is no stranger to Guyana’s developing petroleum industry. In fact, over the past few years, he has made several presentations in Guyana where he outlined projections for Guyana’s economic growth and cautioned that Guyana should not neglect certain key areas such as its non-energy sector.

In July 2018, he also co-authored an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) publication titled: “The Dutch Disease Phenomenon and Lessons for Guyana: Trinidad and Tobago’s Experience.”

GOOD STRATEGY
The economist, who is also a senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), indicated that he was familiar with President David Granger’s Green State Development Strategy (GSDS) and opined that it is a “good strategy”.

The GSDS is premised on sustainable utilisation of the country’s natural resource wealth to support economic resilience and building human capital. As articulated by President Granger, the GSDS aims to promote sustained economic prosperity, environmental security and the social well-being of Guyanese.

Further explaining the role in this developmental strategy for Guyana was former executive director of Conservation International Guyana, Dr. David Singh, who spoke with the Guyana Chronicle earlier this year.

“The GSDS is government’s means by which it frames the discussion around how do you develop an economy with a future,” he said. “One of the things it’s built on, is that it seeks to provide a mechanism by which Guyana’s new-found oil wealth will be used towards what is essentially a sustainable development agenda for the country,” he continued.

With this in mind, however, Dr. Hosein stressed that Guyana must not make the mistake of “ignoring green” when these oil revenues start to flow.

The production of the commercial crude historically began on December 20, 2019, in the Liza-One field of the Stabroek Block, months ahead of the March 2020 timeline.

The output from this first phase is expected to reach capacity of 120,000 gross barrels of oil per day (bdp), utilising the Liza Destiny floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, and the first cargo is set to be sold within several weeks.

The current estimated discovered recoverable resources from the Stabroek Block are more than six billion oil equivalent barrels. By 2025, it is expected that Guyana will produce at least 750,000 barrels a day.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that Guyana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could grow 86 per cent in 2020 but cautioned that this forecast may be subject to large revisions, where even small changes to the projected oil output in 2020 could potentially result in major changes in the overall economic performance.

A recent World Oil report, however, noted that with these current projected operation outcomes, “Guyana, with a population of less than 800,000, may end up producing more crude per person than any other country in the world.”

This means, ceteris paribus, Guyana may be one of the richer countries in the world, on a per capita basis.