–Minister Teixeira says, rejects group’s ‘baseless aspersions’

IN a scathing rejection of a letter penned by members of the Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN) about access to information under the Access to Information Act, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira, has said that the information being sough

y the group is easily accessible in the public domain.
According to the minister, the authors, in a letter published in the Stabroek News on March 16, mentioned two “unjustified claims” that the Access to Information Act, having been invoked to access tax information for ExxonMobil Guyana and its co-ventures, and their failure to obtain same thereunder, suggests that there are inadequacies of the Act, or some deliberate efforts to hide information, and that they are unable to access the oil companies tax certificates [from other referenced sources], suggesting that they have some degree of legal right to obtain same.
“It would be interesting to note that the information that the aforementioned group is seeking – is readily available and accessible within the public domain, vis-à-vis, the oil companies’ financial statements, which can be obtained from the Deeds and Commercial Registries Authority,” Minister Teixeira said.

In her statement, she said, by law, companies operating in Guyana are required to file their annual tax returns with the Deeds and Commercial Registries.
For the avoidance of doubt, the information being sought concerns the tax certificate issued by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) that represents the oil companies’ share of taxes, which is to be paid from the government’s share of profit oil in accordance with the Petroleum Agreement (2016).

“Although third parties shall not have access to taxpayers’ data from the GRA in accordance with the law; insofar as the tax certificate is concerned issued by the GRA to the oil companies or any other company for that matter; the tax information, notwithstanding, can be extracted from the companies’ financial statements,” Minister Teixeira explained.
She added: “Commonsensically, this group (OGGN), which is made up of seasoned attorneys, accountants and economists, ought to know that they can independently ascertain the tax information that they seek from the financial statements, which can be obtained from the Deeds and Commercial Registries as previously mentioned.”

The minister further drew the group’s attention to Section 15 of the Access to Information Act, which states that a person shall not apply under this Act for access to, among other things, a document which contains information that is open to public access or an official website, as part of a public register or otherwise, in accordance with any other written law, where even that access is subject to a fee or other charge.

The Act further states that a person should not apply for access to a document which contains information that is available for purchase by the public in accordance with arrangements made by a public authority, a document that is available for public inspection in a registry maintained by the Registrar General, National Archives, Parliament or other public authority.
“As a result of this Act, as connectivity improved over the years, government policy requires government and state agencies to post information on their websites in a timely fashion ensuring the public is well informed in accordance with the Act,” Minister Teixeira said.

She added that Guyana’s Access to Information Act was modelled on and adopted wholesale the above-mentioned section and others of its Canadian counterpart before a Parliamentary Special Select Committee and passage in the National Assembly.
“Against the foregoing, we wish to categorically reject the OGGN’s baseless aspersions, and we urge that, in the future, they do their homework thoroughly,” Minister Teixeira said.