Attorney-at-Law and Member of Parliament Sanjeev Datadin has said that improvements to the Local Content Act must include greater benefits for petroleum-related sectors.
He made the call during the recently concluded Local Content Summit, held at the Georgetown Marriott Hotel, where he spoke on the topic of upcoming legislative amendments aimed at making Guyana more investor- and business-friendly.
“The principle of the legislation states 51 per cent – majority Guyanese national ownership. It’s not very popular with non-Guyanese nationals, but immensely popular with the local business sector because they now have an opportunity to be competitive. Overall, more resources remain in the country. We all know that the Local Content Act is going to be improved upon… You can rest assured that vested rights and interests are not where changes will happen. Changes will happen in areas that improve the existing framework and take it further,” he noted.
Datadin added that the Act must ensure cost advantages are extended to oil and gas-related sectors such as agriculture.
“Eleven hundred companies in Guyana operate with Local Content licences. Six thousand five hundred people are employed by those companies. The value, if we consider it by revenue, has been growing year on year and now exceeds five hundred and twenty-five million United States dollars. But if we look ahead at what’s coming, it must be about how we make it better… It would mean not only the availability of resources for other sectors, but that the competitive nature by which it must be done would require those sectors to benefit from cost advantages,” he said.
He noted that if the same principles and efficiencies applied in the competitive petroleum sector are extended to related sectors, Guyana stands to see improvements not only in the availability of services but in the competitiveness and cost-effectiveness of those services.
Regulatory compliance, Datadin said, must continue to be a key requirement.
He added that there should also be better management of information sources and resources within sectors to ensure smoother processes.
