Hoyte slams Beal deal secrecy
The PNC has reiterated its position on the Beal deal with its leader Desmond Hoyte explaining that while the party welcomes foreign investment it could not support the proposed agreement to set up a rocket launch site because of the secrecy in which its details are shrouded. Speaking with reporters at a Congress Place press conference on Wednesday, Hoyte said that if the deal was as far advanced as the government has announced, then it should be in a position to make available some basic information to the public. "There ought to be some information given to the Guyanese people about basic things about the project. I mean if you reach the stage where you are about to sign... surely the government can say to us that from this arrangement these would be the revenue flows to the government... so that one could get a fairly good idea as to what quantum of fiscal resources would flow to the government." He said too that they should be in a position to tell Guyanese about the arrangements for the environmental impact studies, which should have been done before the deal was struck, to be executed after the deal is signed. Hoyte also cautioned that Guyana may be taken up the garden path and then abandoned by the American company, citing its shifting positions in its press releases as cause for concern. He said that when Beal officials had called on him, they had indicated that they were still negotiating whether the laws of Guyana would govern the agreement to be signed with the government as well as the laws which would obtain in the concession. He said too that the Beal officials were not in a position to answer questions related to the environment when these were put to them. Asked about Beal's bona fides, Hoyte said "You note the problems which they have had in other countries; the way in which they have been shifting from position to position in their press releases; questions have arisen about whether they will get permissions from the relevant US federal government agencies for the transfer of technology; and the real question is whether OPIC [the Overseas Private Investment Corporation] will insure the Beal investment, given that it has not been extending insurance to American investment in Guyana. "All of those are things which we really have to be concerned about as to whether or not these people are taking us up the garden path so to speak and at the end of the day after they have raised expectations very high, just fade and vanish and depart into the sunset. We don't know."
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