Dear Editor,
Rumours abound that the government has promised one of his closest friends to be the main player behind a proposed private public partnership (PPP) in the development of the East Coast, the mud flat in the ocean from Kingston to Better Hope – an area bigger than the entire Georgetown. Are the rumor mills true?
The friend is the one who benefited from an East Bank complex, the Marriott deal and the Berbice Bridge deal, among other PPP deals pre-2011. The arrangement in those deals, as the media had exposed, was government investing the overwhelming majority of funds and the private investors only a small portion but the private investor gets a majority of shares, run the company, and is the first to recover investment and receive dividends. The friend does not invest much money but his returns are fantastic in the thousands of percent.
Is it true that several private investors had developed an oil and gas plan and submitted proposals for development of sections of the East Coast without government injection of funds. Are the plans for development proposals from private investors being expanded into a PPP plan for the area to benefit friend (s) of officials of the government?
With expected government financing the studies for this mud flat project, shouldn’t the public be allowed to participate and invest in it? Is there no limit to the menacing greed of high officials and their close friends and cronies?
Yours truly,
Budhram Singh
