The update by the Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Guyana and Brazil on proposed infrastructural development should serve as a timely reminder to our political leadership that they have to arrive at some sort of “terms of engagement” sooner rather than later.
The gridlock over the passage of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AMLCFT) Bill has exposed a debilitating partisanship resulting in our developmental drive stagnating.
Every financial institution, from the World Bank to the Caribbean Development Bank, has pointed out the key role infrastructure played in the transformation of formerly poverty-stricken states such as China and India into burgeoning economic powerhouses. Our region was specifically identified as severely lagging in this regard but for Guyana, the lacuna is particularly extreme.
The four projects identified in the MoU – an asphalted highway between Linden and Lethem, a hydro-power facility, transmission lines to conduct its generated power and a deep-water harbour – can definitely be game changers if they are brought to fruition.
While one would have thought the benefits of these projects would be self-evident to even the most blinkered observer of the Guyanese scene, with the attitude adopted by the opposition on the AMLCFT Bill, it might be useful to spell them out. We boast that our country has 83,000 square miles of territory but in reality, for the most part we are as land deficient as any of our fellow West Indian territories.
Ninety per cent of our population are strung along a one-mile deep, 200-mile long strip on the Atlantic Coast that makes us even more densely populated than Trinidad, with twice our population.
The Linden-Lethem Highway, which would connect to the Linden-Georgetown Highway, would finally open up our country for settlement, much as the first railroad connecting the east and west coasts of the U.S.A. did for that country, 150 years ago. One can speculate at the transformative changes that would be wrought just from the transportation of goods from Northern Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean.
This is being quantified before proceeding. But Guyanese would also be facilitated to settle along the Highway, with the knowledge that Georgetown or Lethem would be merely hours away. At the present the treacherous trail scares off all but the intrepid.
While being a separate project, the deep water harbour, most likely in Berbice, is integrally linked with the Highway, since the raisin d’être for the latter would be the transhipment of Brazilian goods to ports in the Caribbean, the U.S., Canada and Europe. The handling and storage facilities to deal with these cargo would definitely provide a large economic boost to our economy.
The financing of these two projects would most likely come from Brazil since they would be the ones that would benefit the most through savings generated by cutting in half the time for goods from Manaus to reach the North Atlantic.
The benefits from a massive hydro-electric project in the Upper Mazaruni, has been well rehearsed during the debate on the smaller Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project (AFHEP), no less than by the opposition themselves. The distribution network was also an aspect of the smaller project but since Brazil, in the person of former President Lula da Silva, had indicated their willingness to purchase any excess electricity generated, this would be more extensive and not so incidentally deliver electricity to southern Guyana, including Lethem.
Once again, it would be in Brazil’s interest to provide the funding for these projects or even to stand as guarantor to the China Development Bank or the China Ex-Imp Bank, which have indicated their interest in backing such projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
We hope the requested feasibility studies will be expedited. But even more critical would be the opposition stop being fetters to the development of our country.
