Georgetown: President Donald Ramotar shrugged off the Alliance for Change’s (AFC) promise to place a ban on the exportation of logs, once the Party gets into power.
The party Chairman, Nigel Hughes is alleged to have made the promise, whilst engaging residents of Region Nine including those of Lethem, Baitoon, Maruranau and Shulinab in meetings.
President Donald however, said that for the Party to talk about banning logs when the country is without cheap energy is idle talk, and that without this critical variable, a ban on export would put pressure on ‘the poor people in the country.’
“I would love to do that (ban log export), but we can only do that if we have cheap energy and so can add value to the wood that we have and make more finished products for export,” the President explained.
In responding to recent statements that Guyana is destroying its forest, the president told Barticians on August 30 that, “Our extraction is way below the allowable extraction for a sustainable forest… if we do not export them, what will we do?… we do not have the cheap energy to do the value added that is so necessary for exports and to earn us more money.”
The country has consistently reflected a low deforestation rate of less than 0.1 percent and has reported a verified low rate of illegality.
The national Monitoring Reporting and Verification system (MRVS) has been independently verified every year for the past three years by a third party international auditor, following international guidance for such audits, and all results made public.
The AFC, already in pre-election mode, in case of an early election is seeking to ride on the recent attack on operations of Bai Shai Shan Lin-the largest logging company in Guyana. Among these are the unproven allegations that the company has been shipping out a large number of the country’s timber, a move that is not in accordance with the logging agreement.
The attack on the company followed similar unwarranted attacks on Chinese investments in the country. President Ramotar noting these attacks, pointed out that China is the second largest economy in the world today, and is a major source of investments.
Moreover, the President noted that Bai Shan Lain has not broken any of the country’s laws. “They have not been doing any of the things that people say,” he said.
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