Guyana Government plans national mining consortium to expand citizen ownership

Guyana's Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali has an­nounced plans for the cre­ation of a na­tion­al min­ing con­sor­tium that would al­low min­ers and or­di­nary cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate col­lec­tive­ly in large-scale min­ing ven­tures through a lo­cal­ly owned com­pa­ny.

Ali out­lined the pro­pos­al on Fri­day dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of a new Cit­i­zens Bank branch in Bar­ti­ca, say­ing the ini­tia­tive forms part of broad­er ef­forts to ex­pand fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and in­crease pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in key sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Un­der the pro­posed mod­el, small, medi­um and large-scale min­ers would join with mem­bers of the pub­lic to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al min­ing com­pa­ny ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“We’re go­ing to come to­geth­er, cre­ate a con­sor­tium, buy the best tech­nol­o­gy, do all of the tech­ni­cal work, and move to­wards cre­at­ing a world-class min­ing com­pa­ny owned by Guyanese, built by Guyanese, in which every cit­i­zen now broad­ens fi­nan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion,” Ali said.

The Guyanese leader said the ini­tia­tive is aimed at en­sur­ing cit­i­zens re­tain greater own­er­ship of the coun­try’s min­er­al re­sources and ben­e­fit more di­rect­ly from op­por­tu­ni­ties in the sec­tor.

“In­stead of hav­ing large min­ers from around the world tak­ing up the large-scale op­por­tu­ni­ty, we are go­ing to build this na­tion­al min­ing com­pa­ny to­geth­er,” he said.

Ali linked the pro­pos­al to wider ef­forts by the gov­ern­ment to trans­form the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture and cre­ate new av­enues for in­vest­ment and wealth cre­ation.

He said sev­er­al ini­tia­tives are be­ing con­sid­ered, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a ju­nior stock ex­change, the cre­ation of a Guyana De­vel­op­ment Bank, in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties tied to agri­cul­ture, in­fra­struc­ture and in­dus­tri­al projects, and deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial banks.

Ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent, dis­cus­sions have been on­go­ing with the bank­ing sec­tor over the past year to de­vel­op sys­tems that sup­port broad­er fi­nan­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion.

He al­so dis­closed that talks are un­der­way with Cit­i­zens Bank on the es­tab­lish­ment of a De­vel­op­ment Bank desk and an elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sup­port desk aimed at im­prov­ing ac­cess to ser­vices for res­i­dents of Re­gion Sev­en.

Ali said fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion must ex­tend be­yond ac­cess to bank­ing ser­vices and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens to in­vest and build wealth.

“Fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence is not on­ly fi­nan­cial ac­cess, it is the in­de­pen­dence to in­vest in your own idea, sup­port your own idea and em­brace your own idea,” he said.

The pres­i­dent said the long-term ob­jec­tive is to de­vel­op new in­vest­ment ve­hi­cles that would en­able Guyanese fam­i­lies to be­come share­hold­ers in sec­tors that have tra­di­tion­al­ly been ac­ces­si­ble on­ly to larg­er in­vestors, while broad­en­ing eco­nom­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion across the coun­try. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)