ChrisRam.net

Introduction
When the Ministry of Finance belatedly broke its silence last month on the concessions given by the government to Queens Atlantic Investment Inc (QA II) it asked Guyanese to ignore such considerations as transparency and the rule of law and sought to shift the debate to the “ultimate question that needs to be asked… whether these investments are a positive development for Guyana.” The two statements issued by the ministry within one day of each other contained what were some very categorical representations: that the package involved investments of US$30 million; that the investments by the group would create 600 jobs in Georgetown; and that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was executed between Go-Invest and QAII in March 2008. The facts are different. They show how a serious erosion of the tax base by the extension of generous concessions unlawfully given to a favoured few contribute to the creation of an uneven playing field that instead of encouraging investment has the direct opposite effect. Such action entrenches and enriches a few and effectively creates a monopolistic situation at the expense of potential competitors and the economy in areas as diverse as construction, mining and forestry, with the ever loss-making Barama, exploiter extraordinaire of the country’s forest resources being the shining example.

For all the suggestions of bigness, QA II up to a couple of years ago had a share capital of fifty-thousand Guyana dollars (US$250) and the government should be interested in where the US$30 million dollars for the investments will come from. Even with generous and free financing by the state, the group has had to borrow hundreds of millions from the banking system, even as the parent’s books showed a negative net asset position.

Pattern of favours
The original investment in GPC was $460 million for a 60% stake in the company by Queens Atlantic Investment Inc. An additional 30% was acquired for G$200 million. It would have been reasonable and financially prudent for the additional shares to have been sold at a premium since they allowed QAII to consolidate its control.  In fact the Privatisation Unit sold the group the additional shares at what appears to be a discount of at least $30 million.

By way of an article earlier this week in the Stabroek News we learn that QA II’s main operating subsidiary, New GPC Inc, has benefited from special exemption from the tender process contrary to law, but as Minister Ramsammy says, with more innocence than information, in accordance with a cabinet decision – as though cabinet were paramount to the law. The New GPC has been handpicked for “major contracts” to procure medical supplies on behalf of the Ministry of Health and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation whose Medical Superintendent Dr Madan Rambaran is on the Board of GPC – another conflict of interest that is now so much part of public life in Guyana.

Free money
But the concessions go further: at December 31, 2006 the company had been advanced close to half a billion dollars by the Ministry of Health and the GHPC “to procure medical supplies on their behalf.” A government that taxes its citizens till they scream and that perpetually fails to refund overpaid taxes in a timely manner finances a supplier of products that can no doubt be procured directly and perhaps even at lower overall cost. The advance of $160M by the Ministry of Health and $314M by the GHPC alone accounted for well over 40% of the 2006 purchases by the company! Then the company turns around and invests $140M of that money in the Berbice Bridge Company of which $50M is in the form of a loan stock earning a tax-free interest of 11% and bonds of $10 million earning 9% interest.

For all its boasts about being the “Caribbean’s leading pharmaceutical manufacturer” the company’s production labour accounts for under 3% of turnover. At $47 million production labour barely exceeds depreciation – hardly evidence of any key focus on job creation. The company’s financial statements also show incredibly that it exports all its manufactured products and that it benefits from another general tax concession that is in violation of the country’s international obligations as pointed out in the Business Page of January 13, 2008.

The Fabulous Five
The above is a summary of various agreements signed by Dr Ashni Singh, Minister of Finance and Dr Ramroop of the QA II companies. These agreements make disturbing reading for the appearance of carelessness and lack of expertise on the part of the Privatisation Board, Go-Invest and the Ministry of Finance. These are some of the worst agreements I have ever seen in multi-million US dollar documents. There is no preamble linking “Supplementary Investment Agreements” to the so-called Memorandum of Understanding which the Ministry of Finance claims was signed in March 2008, or to any principal agreement. The agreements contain several blanks, and manuscript changes are not even initialled, a most elementary requirement that raises questions as to the dates of the making or modification of the documents. What is worse is that all the agreements preceded the much touted MOU, in one case by several months. Again any professionally done, arms’ length transaction would begin with a Memorandum of Understanding to be followed by supplementary agreements as certain details are worked out and pre-conditions are met.

Lots of toilets…
The claims by the government and the company in their public pronouncements of 600 jobs being created by the investments appear a gross exaggeration. In fact according to these documents the number is just half of that when the projects come fully on stream. A careful examination of the items approved for tax exemptions “for one year beginning from the date of signing the Agreement” reveals a surprising number of similarities between the items approved for Healthcare Life Sciences Inc and Health International Inc. Examples are one complete switchboard system; 500 x 5/8˝ steel rods; 1000 x 0.5 mild steel rods etc, 50 length 0.75˝ armor flex insulation; and one 500 KVA generator each. There is a carte blanche agreement for tax concessions on the contents of thirty-one pallets for Global Printing, and one must sympathise with the customs officer who has to determine whether they constitute “One complete printing press.”  The list of items for Healthcare includes only a few real big ticket items (500 KVA generator, one mini-van and two double cab pick-up and four forklifts) which along with the cables, breakers and switches hardly appear to amount to the US$9 million claimed to be invested by this company.

Some of the items approved for concessions appear to be more appropriate for domestic use while others are inflated. One of the entities (Global Textile) has approval for forty-six toilet sets, “12 ctns Briggs China lavatories” and “12 ctns white rf toilet express” while Healthcare Life Sciences has approval for another twenty toilet sets and twenty wash basins. This quantity of toilets seems surprising and yet there is nothing to suggest that any of these is for the newspaper company.

Kudos to the press
The story of QA II and its investments showed the Guyana media at its investigative and persistent best, helped no doubt by President Jagdeo’s own uninformed outburst. It has allowed us to see, admittedly in one instance only, of how state business is transacted behind closed doors by a few who consider laws a matter of (in)convenience and raises the troubling question of what else might be taking place with this and other favoured investors that the government does not wish us to know about. It exposes the serious and costly deficiencies on the part of the Georgetown Hospital and the Ministries of Health and Finance, the Cabinet, Go-Invest, the Privatisation Board and the GRA. It provides ample evidence of how this government is generous to their friends at the expense of the people. It is a failure of people and systems that allows the careless granting of concessions without a proper analysis of proposals submitted while the apparent absence of adequate follow-up mechanisms amounts to a gross dereliction of responsibility for which no one will be held accountable.

Still more questions
The revelation of these agreements does not mean that all questions have been answered. The famous MOU of March 2008 is still a state secret, and it is still not clear what pharmaceutical products the US$9 million dollar Healthcare Life Sciences Inc will manufacture that GPC cannot do or which of the two medical companies has been granted tax holidays. Or quite what kind of export Processing Zone one of the new companies, Health International Inc, will establish and how different that will be from the kind that has been called for by the private sector for many years but ignored by the government. Despite the continuing publicity, the government has not tabled the agreements in the National Assembly, fuelling fears that there may be even more to hide or that the government believes that accountability and transparency are a matter of form and not substance.

But the exposure has shown how important it is for the Privatisation Board and Go-Invest to be restructured and to include persons of competence and independence both at the directorial and executive levels. It is farcical to have the Minister of Finance not only sitting but chairing the Privatisation Board which makes recommendations to Cabinet which then instructs him to act on those recommendations.

Conclusion
The concessions and real monetary benefits the Ramroop Group has enjoyed make it practically impossible for any competitor – in any of the group’s activities – to operate successfully, a fact that should not be overlooked by those who are taken in by claims of those who seek further concessions. Let us understand that in creating effective monopolies we encourage high profit-seeking and prices, and stifle competition – the consumers’ best friend. This is not an anti-business or anti-investment position. The call for transparency and compliance with the law by those in power cannot be more urgent, even as we welcome new investments.

Introduction
Oil seems to have a talismanic role in the world’s psyche. More than gold its price causes predictions of apocalyptic proportions, paralysis in the modern world and fears of wheels grinding to a halt. Those of us of an earlier generation will recall how the four-fold rise in the oil price in the seventies sent shockwaves across the world and caused a tectonic shift in global resources as more money poured into the oil-producing economies than they could handle. The dramatic increases in oil prices in 1973-74, 1978-80 and 1989-90 were all followed by worldwide recession. Yet with unerring regularity and often defying the predictions of doom, the economies would return to the historical pattern of periods of unprecedented growth, low interest and inflation, consumer confidence and spending.

In the decade of the eighties, the economies of Asia grew (real GNP) astronomically ranging from 120% growth in the Republic of Korea, Taiwan 90%, Hong Kong 65% and Singapore 80%. Even the Asian crisis went almost as soon as it had arrived, leading the region and the world’s economic managers to take the credit for having fixed the system – once and for all. The more hubristic were even prepared to say that inflation had been bottled up, the economic cycle of periods of recovery and prosperity characterised by relatively rapid growth followed by contraction and recession or the more extreme form ‘depression,’ had been neutralised and the central bankers and the IMF were in complete control.

Storm clouds
Even Bush could not mismanage the US economy given the magical powers of Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Bank, while Gordon Brown, the ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer was credited with all the economic achievements of Tony Blair. The only threats that the revered gurus could see was the bin Laden-inspired terrorism, and more mundanely, the impact of washing drug money in the pure financial stream overseen by the ever more confident central bankers. But then suddenly storm clouds began to gather on the horizon and the respected Economist publication, ‘The World in 2006’ cautioned that the global growth rate of close to 5% for two consecutive years was too good to be true and that things could not remain so rosy for ever.

Real oil prices had already begun to climb, a housing boom or rather bubble financed by sub-prime loans, extravagant consumer spending with the gas-guzzling Hummer and SUVs being the vehicles of choice and negative personal and national savings rates were facilitated and masked by cheap money. History is replete with examples that such a party could not last, that the night would come to an end and the hangover would be long and painful. That unfortunately has now happened, and almost quarterly we see leading institutions like the IMF and the European central banks revising their economic outlook, shaving a few decimal points with each revision. The decline started with the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, which now affects the global financial system with fears that the system can collapse and that Bear Stearns in the US and Northern Rock in the UK were only the early casualties.

A matter of opinion
How the crisis will play out, however, is a matter of dispute, and there are conflicting projections by influential players in the system. The influential Bank for International Settlements – the central banks’ central bank – considers that the world economy is probably facing a deeper and more prolonged slowdown than many assume, and that even though the worst of the credit crisis may be over that did not indicate an all-clear for the world economy.

Barclays Capital and the Royal Bank of Scotland seem to have a more pessimistic view of the state of the world’s major economies, and in mid-June the latter advised its clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.
The UK right of centre newspaper the Daily Telegraph quotes the bank as warning that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as “all the chickens come home to roost” from the excesses of the global boom, with the contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.

Global inflation has jumped from 3.2% to 5% over the last year. Tim Bond, chief equity strategist of Barclays Capital, believes that the “emerging world is now on the cusp of a serious crisis; that inflation is out of control in Asia,” and that the need to slam on the brakes will cause “a deep global recession over the next three years as policy-makers try to get inflation back in the box.”

One of the less discussed implications of globalisation is that it spreads both its virtues and its vices, and whether it is a matter of inflation, interest rates or a credit crunch, the dangers will move across borders. Of course it also means that every economy becomes its brothers’ keeper with a real and direct stake, and as is evident with the EU countries complaints of loss of independence is not infrequent. Now with oil and food costs soaring, inflation has returned with a vengeance; economic managers, investment managers are nervous; the genie of inflation has re-appeared; and the dangers of inflation are now so great that those managers would readily sacrifice growth to control inflation. But even that is a major challenge and many are now saying that what has in fact changed is that the long-term growth trend is under threat. And again oil is a major factor, with active wars less so with stability gradually returning to Iraq so that even presidential hopeful Barack Obama is now shifting his position on the drawdown of US troops.

The jury is out
So far it is hard to say which of the two scenarios predicted by BIS and RBS is correct. It is true that the wage-price spiral has been avoided but jobs are disappearing whether in the closure of 600 Starbucks coffee houses or among major car manufacturers, and during this week the stock market actually reacted positively as one of America’s major car manufacturers reported only an 18% decline in sales – it was expected to be higher! Let it not be forgotten that America is still by miles the world’s largest economy and it is the spending habits of the American consumer that have driven the meteoric rise of China and India. The reverse may not be entirely proportional because demand in the numerically significant China and India has increased, but not even America’s worst critic would wish for the collapse of the US economy.

The double edge of the twin
It is one of the ironies that these two economies are partly responsible for the sustained oil and food price increases. While past oil shocks have been caused by supply constraints, the current increases have a significant element of being demand-driven as China’s industries and their growing middle class along with their Indian counterparts find that they can afford cars that are still dependent on oil. The search for alternative energy sources which accompanied pervious oil shocks waned as things returned to relative normalcy with the significant exception of electricity companies which started to move away from oil. The current one will have some similar effect as car manufacturers accelerate their efforts to produce hybrid cars. The airline industry has cut back its flights with immediate effects on the region’s tourism industry that is so pivotal to its survival. And as tourism falls, so too will remittances from the rich countries as migrants struggle to stave off the foreclosure of their homes. Just getting over the next five years without a major catastrophe will be a major achievement.

But while oil has stolen the limelight, food is an equally grave and direct concern, and for the first time in decades countries are suddenly talking of food security. Heads of governments of the region and the world are holding conferences to address the dramatic increases in the price of basic food items, some of which it has to be said are related to the search for alternative energy sources with corn being the most popular cited example. In fact at the World Food Summit (WFS) some NGOs called for a moratorium on ethanol production arguing this would cut wheat prices by 20%.

With oil there may be several alternatives that would be both technically feasible and economically attractive, but food is a different story. The escape of hundreds of millions in the developing world from hunger and poverty means that there are far many more mouths to feed with a growing demand for meat, which itself demands more feed. Like oil, agriculture is not susceptible to dramatic short-term fixes, but that does not mean that more cannot be done, and as we witnessed recently the placing of an export ban on one type of rice by India had an immediate adverse effect on the international price. Countries and their politicians are particularly vulnerable to fears of hunger among their populace and countries are reluctant to co-ordinate national strategies for the global good. For example, while Japan has agreed to release its government-controlled stockpile, Egypt has extended its ban on the rice trade for another year. To compound all of this, the interest of the private operator/producer/exporter and that of the government seldom converge and short of government control regional and international agreements are hard to make and even harder to enforce.

The problem with agriculture is also structural – in both the developed and developing world there is a reducing appetite for participation in the sector with weather and price fluctuations making it like a night at the casino. Added to the challenges of global warming, the reduction of water supplies, declining investment funds, reduced land for agriculture and a long-term trend of falling prices for agricultural produce, we see an industry that can only grow if there is a significant increase in agricultural productivity.

Alas, giving seeds to the populace may appear politically attractive, but it is no more than a very limited short term measure with some impact at the level of the poor household.

Note: I have delayed the column on taxation as I have been promised some additional information.