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.
