A paved road to Brazil will not happen within the next ten years
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
March 8, 2007
Just when we thought that our main challenge as a nation was the reflexive ethnic fears generated when either of the main ethnic groups pursued self-advancement, we have been startled by the fear that the PPP can actually succeed in bringing about some sort of development to this country.
In order to explain (away) this development, a great many ways are being found to find fault with what is taking place in Guyana .
The latest such approach is contained in what has to go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest editorial ever written. It appeared in last Friday's edition of the Stabroek News and took up just a few lines short of a full page. I cannot recall a longer editorial ever been written.
The lack of brevity of that historic editorial suggests that there must have been an important point to be made. Searching, the Peeper found what he suspected to be the central proposition of the editorial which was that there is a contrast, one that amounts to a contradiction, between the President's approach to development on the coast and his approach to the question of the road to Brazil and consequently to the development of the interior.
The argument goes as follows: The President of Guyana in opening Buddy's International Hotel stressed the need for a more positive attitude towards development (projects). However, this upbeat mood was absent a few years ago when the same President spoke about the importance of the rate of return on any investment to pave the road to Brazil and build a bridge across the Kurupukari River .
The claim of a contrast in attitude is somewhat overstretched. For one, the President of Guyana has always advocated the need for a positive attitude towards development. However, this does not mean that we should simply follow every pipe-dream.
There are many things that we can dream about, but those dreams must be checked by an assessment of what is feasible, what is required and what is affordable. For example, the Peeper has always contended that the Linden to Georgetown Highway was a road that was laid twenty years before it should have been built.
Burnham needed the largesse of the West just after the elections of 1964 to consolidate his hold on political power. Recently released declassified documents of the Johnson Presidency revealed the desperation with which Burnham was begging for money in order to show some developments before the 1968 election. That the largesse flowed had great deal to do with the fact that the United Force was Burnham's coalition partner and the UF's leader, the Finance Minister of the coalition, had something that encouraged the West to provide significant sums of money to the coalition government.
Those funds, which eventually added to the country's debt burden, were used in part to create a road link, some call it a highway, between Soesdyke and Linden . However, that road link failed to meet expectations of opening up lands on both sides to massive agricultural development.
Persons were brought from as far as England to cultivate the land but for years agriculture never took off along the road link. It was the bauxite industry that sustained the mining town and that industry did not at that early stage require a road link to assure its viability. For the great cost involved in building that road, there was not the immediate return.
It would have been more feasible to instead have invested in an improved river service to the bauxite community, which onto this day still has ships offloading supplies for the industry, rather than building the road link so soon. Of course the road is very much needed now as the link to Brazil and the south of the country is being negotiated, as well as for the movement of logs from the interior.
In the days of the Cold War, containing Cheddi Jagan was enough feasibility for the West, and they were therefore willing to finance large-scale investments on behalf of governments, even though these were not expected to yield an appropriate rate of return.
The philosophy in those days was also that the State needed to be involved in infrastructure projects which were not feasible for the private sector, and both multilateral and bilateral aid was channeled towards this developmental model.
Today of course we can be upbeat all we want, but the reality is that our finances can hardly build a few miles of roadway and thus we need to borrow for large-scale investments such as paving a road to Brazil . But all of those whom we can borrow from will today insist on feasibility.
The cost of paving the road to Brazil is extremely prohibitive and no international bank is going to lend us the money at this stage, considering the anticipated rate of return.
It is true that models such as Buy, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) can facilitate government-private sector partnerships for such projects. In the end however, the private investors also desire a rate of a return and if this cannot be guaranteed they will not invest a dime in such a road.
I do not believe that this paved road to Brazil is going to materialise for sometime yet. For the next ten years, I think we will have to live with upgrading and maintaining the present road until the conditions are propitious for a paved road to be built.
It is good to be upbeat but we have at the same time to ensure that we are not throwing money way by pushing projects before their time, thus causing them to become white elephants.
We can fault the government for not pushing Guyana 's continental destiny. We can even argue about the failure to bridge the Takatu River . However, in the end, however nice-sounding and good-looking development projects are, unless feasible, they will remain mere projects on paper. And making that point does not require a whole page editorial