Minister Noel Holder is listed as the Agriculture Minister in President David Granger’s Cabinet. But for the last three and a half years, he has been mostly missing in action. On those few instances that he decides to show up and speak, he disowns the responsibility for agriculture. This past week, he briefly showed up and spoke out on the $30 billion loan taken by the Special Purpose Unit (SPU) of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) on behalf of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo). The normally gentle Minister was belligerent in his rare speaking-out foray. He claimed he does not know anything about the $30 billion loan, does not know where the money is, does not know who has the money and, “frankly”, he “does not want to know”. This is the Agriculture Minister who has responsibility for sugar, claiming he does not want to know about a loan taken for sugar; a loan that might well be the largest loan ever taken by this nation’s Government.
It is irresponsible that the Minister does not want to know about this loan. It is scandalous for the Minister insisting he has no information about the loan. It is illegal that a loan has been taken for sugar and the responsible Minister has not signed off. Something is smelly for the Agriculture Minister to ask where is the $30 billion. The SPU has had a disbursement of $17 billion for almost a year now, paying an interest of 4.75 per cent. GuySuCo already owes hundreds of millions as interest on the loan. Yet, the Agriculture Minister loudly proclaims he “frankly” does not want to know. As Agriculture Minister, I would have kicked up a stink to know. This irresponsible behaviour demands his resignation. I am confident that the Granger Administration did not want the Minister to know and that the SPU did not engage the Minister in any discussion about the loan. I sympathise with the Minister, but hold him responsible, because clearly, he did not want to know.
In the meantime, GuySuCo had to wait for nine months before a Board was appointed and throughout all that period, the Minister was silent and even complicit in the non-appointment of the Board. In the absence of the Board, a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was appointed. The Minister was not involved in the appointment and learnt of the appointment of Dr Davis as the CEO the same time as all of us. Just as with the loan, he was sidelined in the appointment of the CEO and now he has further been sidelined with the appointment of the Board.
This week it has been revealed that the $30 billion loan was arranged by a “fixer” and the cost for fixing the loan was $116 million. This is a Corporation that cannot find money to pay wages of sugar workers on time. Late payment of wages for sugar workers is no longer a rare thing, happening often these days, twice in the last month alone. No one in Government has anything to say about the late payments and has sought to find money to pay wages on a timely basis – a violation of the law. For a cash-strapped Corporation, the pay-out of $116 million to “fix” a loan seems irresponsible. In fact, the first use of the $30 billion loan is to pay the “fixer”. But the Minister has nothing to say and the SPU head says it is only a “storm in a teacup”.
The Minister is recklessly AWOL [absent without leave] as Republic Bank announced it is suspending disbursement of the remaining $13 billion of the loan because the SPU has used the loan in contradiction of the terms of the loan. The Minister in his usual style, has not found it necessary to speak out on the “hijacking” of a GuySuCo property in La Bonne Intention, East Coast Demerara, by the SPU/NICIL to establish a swanky “rum shop” for the privileged in Government to hang out. We know that even the docile GuySuCo management is outraged by this “hijacking”, using GuySuCo funds taken from the $30 billion loan to create a swanky “rum shop”. The Minister needs to stand with GuySuCo and not be docile.
It was encouraging to see the Minister venturing out to “speak” his mind. But it is not like he does not want to know anything about sugar, he wants little to do with agriculture. Take his silence over the Panama rice scandal. Twenty containers of rice shipped to Panama has been rejected and the Minister is quiet, nothing to say. Many of us are asking: Do we have a Minister of Agriculture?
