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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Ramps Logistics confused over content certificate denial by Guyana

by

Rishard Khan
997 days ago
20220623
Chairman of Ramps Logistics’ Guyana board, Shaun Rampersad

Chairman of Ramps Logistics’ Guyana board, Shaun Rampersad

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of Ramps Lo­gis­tics’ Guyana board Shaun Ram­per­sad is call­ing on the Guyanese gov­ern­ment for an­swers on why the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal con­tent cer­tifi­cate ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments were sub­mit­ted to the sec­re­tari­at to prove their com­pli­ance with the lo­cal con­tent laws.

“Af­ter we did all of this, the on­ly thing that we got out of the lo­cal con­tent sec­re­tari­at was an au­to­mat­ed email that says you have been de­nied ac­cess to the lo­cal con­tent reg­istry. That’s it,” Ram­per­sad said.

He said de­spite mak­ing calls and send­ing let­ters through at­tor­neys, all the T&T-based com­pa­ny re­ceived was “stone-cold si­lence.”

“We are kind­ly ask­ing the sec­re­tari­at to please tell us what we need to do, why we’ve been de­nied and how we could fix that,” Ram­per­sad said.

Al­though ini­tial­ly a T&T com­pa­ny, he said they di­vest­ed 51 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s shares to Guyanese na­tion­al Deep­ak Lall for 210 mil­lion Guyanese dol­lars. Ram­per­sad ex­plained that while Lall’s fa­ther and grand­fa­ther were born and raised in Guyana, he was born in T&T but re­ceived a Guyanese pass­port in 2021.

Ram­per­sad dis­missed per­cep­tions that this was done to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the Guyanese lo­cal con­tent laws, which re­quire that com­pa­nies be ma­jor­i­ty-owned by a na­tion­al in or­der to ser­vice the oil and gas in­dus­try.

“Based on the way Guyana is go­ing, the biggest thing that can cat­a­pult Guyana is to get back the best and the bright­est in­to Guyana to bring their cap­i­tal in­to Guyana, to bring their skills in­to Guyana and to bring their net­work in­to Guyana. I feel like if there’s some­body with deep Guyanese roots and he’s will­ing to in­vest sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey in­to Guyana, we should do every­thing to bring those types of folks back to Guyana,” he said.

“I don’t feel like Deep­ak get­ting his pass­port in 2021 is some­thing of a con­ve­nience, I think it’s a re­al big op­por­tu­ni­ty for him to start in­vest­ing in Guyana.”

Ram­per­sad said the com­pa­ny hopes it doesn’t reach the point where it has to go through the courts on the mat­ter. He said with­out the cer­tifi­cate, Ramps will not leave Guyana but will have to dis­con­tin­ue ser­vic­ing the oil and gas sec­tor, which is its biggest rev­enue earn­er.

“We will ac­tu­al­ly have to trim down some of our staff, yes and that’s the part that I’m wor­ried about,” he said.


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