The Guyana gov­ern­ment says it may re­assess bids for the sale of the 197-room Mar­riott Ho­tel here or may have to once again seek re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps), fol­low­ing the un­for­tu­nate death of Amer­i­can busi­ness­man Ramy El-Ba­trawi, whose bid had been the high­est.

“The gov­ern­ment may de­cide to go back out [to bid] or just keep the ho­tel, there’s no rush to con­clude any­thing here be­cause we’re not des­per­ate to sell it,” Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo told re­porters at his week­ly news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

El-Ba­trawi’s com­pa­ny X LLC had sub­mit­ted a US$90 mil­lion bid for the ho­tel while iN­te­grat­ed Group Guyana Inc sub­mit­ted the sec­ond high­est bid at US$86.1 mil­lion.

Jagdeo told re­porters that if the suc­cess­ful bid is now not deemed valid, then the gov­ern­ment may keep the ho­tel in­stead of sell­ing it, “be­cause bids have a va­lid­i­ty pe­ri­od”.

The Na­tion­al In­dus­tri­al & Com­mer­cial In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed (NICIL) had re­ceived a to­tal of six bids from var­i­ous com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly, af­ter is­su­ing a pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion no­tice and in­vi­ta­tions for bids from in­ter­est­ed in­di­vid­u­als or com­pa­nies.

Dur­ing the bid­ding process then, El-Ba­trawi sub­mit­ted the high­est bid of US$65 mil­lion for the ho­tel prop­er­ty. The sec­ond high­est bid, amount­ing to US$55.5 mil­lion, was sub­mit­ted by Robert Badal, a lo­cal busi­ness­man who owns the Pe­ga­sus Ho­tel.

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed all of­fers in­di­cat­ing that the ho­tel is worth more than the high­est bid sub­mit­ted.

The gov­ern­ment had ear­li­er de­fend­ed the sale of the ho­tel say­ing it makes eco­nom­ic sense as the coun­try pre­pares for more in­vest­ments over the next year in its tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try.

“There is no par­tic­u­lar supreme ben­e­fit to gov­ern­ment own­ing it. It’s bet­ter to max­i­mize the mon­ey, in­vest it in some­thing else, back in health care, or maybe in an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty…. It’s a pure busi­ness de­ci­sion,” Jagdeo had said then.

Con­struc­tion of the state-owned ho­tel be­gan in 2011 and was com­mis­sioned in April 2015. It was con­struct­ed with a US$17.3 mil­lion loan from Re­pub­lic Bank, which was lat­er re­struc­tured.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Apr 26, CMC – 

CMC/af/ir/2024