Georgetown : The fiasco with the Amaila Falls Hydro Power (AFHP) Project has been described by former President Bharrat Jagdeo, as a significant loss to the entire nation due to “partisanship and ignorance”.
Delivering brief remarks during the closing of the National Economic Forum at the Guyana International Conference Centre last evening, President Jagdeo said that some of those who opposed the transformational project employed ‘charlatan economics’ and cited the figures given by activists such as Christopher Ram, Ramon Gaskin and Professor Clive Thomas as being completely off the mark. “They killed the hydro because of that,” he said.
The former president said that funds for projects such as those of the magnitude of AFHP were not easily available, and as such, it was a lost opportunity for the nation.
He used the example of proposed changes by the United States of America’s Federal Reserve in the way it may intervene in the stock market. These measures by the US government have not even been implemented, yet the financial fallout has already affected stock markets in the economies of Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan and other developed nations, he said.
Stressing that cheap energy is essential for the future of industrial growth, he said that the loss of the Amaila project would be the biggest defeat for competitiveness and advised that as a nation, “We can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot”.
He questioned the wisdom of opposition politicians whom he reminded of the US$300 million spent in the late 1970s and early 80s by the People’s National Congress government to start the initial hydro power plant in the Mazaruni area. This money, which adjusted for inflation amounts to over US$2 billion, and is still being repaid. It was all for nought since Guyana failed to gain anything from it, he noted.
He said that while healthy political debates and arguments were necessary for any democracy, the interests of the country must always come first, and reminded stakeholders that, “We can’t lose sight of the big picture”.
The AFHP promises noteworthy reductions in power outages, electricity tariff, fuel utilisation savings by 90 percent and the stimulus to economic development, particularly in the processing and manufacturing sectors
The recent pull out of major international partner, Sithe Global, has placed the AFHP in jeopardy. Financial closure to the project with the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) was within reach, and the US$30M Government funded road to the Region Eight site was expected to be completed by the end of this year.
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