The US$18 million loan for Guyana to venture into information technology (IT) is on the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) executive board agenda for today and Chester Bembridge, acting resident representative says it is reasonable to expect the process to go forward.
President Bharrat Jagdeo will be in Washington today, but Office of the President spokesman, Robert Persaud, could not say if it was specifically to meet IDB officials on this issue.
Persaud said the President has several engagements with the multilateral financial agencies and this would include the IDB. The President’s visit was only announced yesterday and came on the heels of the bank’s postponement last Wednesday of the consideration of the loan for Guyana. The President will be back this weekend.
The United States Executive Director at the IDB, Jose Fourquet, last Wednesday secured a postponement of consideration of the US$18 million loan for Guyana based on lobbying by Atlantic Tele Network (ATN) which was seeking support of its position in talks with the government on breaking its phone monopoly here.
Washington sources yesterday said that there is every reason to believe that consideration of the loan would go ahead today as is scheduled.
However, there were reports out of Washington that ATN’s chairman, Cornelius Prior and his lawyers were to meet bank officials yesterday after having requested some clarifications on the project last week and this could be an issue of concern.
The US$18 million loan will support a US$22.5 million project to diversify Guyana’s economic base by revolutionising the information and communications sector and promoting the use of electronic commerce. The entire project is premised on data liberalisation but ATN, which is negotiating the break of its 25-year monopoly with the government, is claiming that it has a monopoly on data and voice transmission.
As such, it is expected that ATN would attempt to register its claim to such a right in view of a programme being supported by the bank to liberalise the sector.
But local sources have already pointed out that when the monopoly licence was granted to ATN in 1991, commercial use of the internet was unheard of and as such, the licence could never have been intended to cover technology still to be developed and which is now reflected in the Voice Over Internet Protocol and downloads via the internet.
The US$22.5 million project has five components; supporting reform of the legal framework in the telecommunication and information sector; improving the use of information and communications technology in the public sector; allowing for a community outreach programme; and promoting information and communication technology service exports. It is seen as a key initiative to diversify Guyana’s economy from being primarily agriculture based and taking it into the service arena in a big way.
ATN, which has an 80% stake in the Guyana Telephone & Telegraph Company Ltd (GT&T), entered into negotiations with the government on the terms to break its monopoly in Guyana several months ago and the two sides were discussing a memorandum of understanding when the turn of events came. Cabinet is still to consider the draft memorandum.
Stabroek News understands that the government’s negotiating team is saying that data transmission ought to be liberalised immediately and the government would be willing to await liberalising voice transmission until GT&T secures full rate rebalancing, which could take two years.
Meanwhile, the President is also expected to meet World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials on the status of Guyana’s case for enhanced debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. The President is also likely to attend the Caribbean Group for Cooperation in Economic Development’s (CGCED) 16th meeting which started on Monday and ends on Thursday.