Barama’s CEO Peter Ho says he is surprised at President Bharrat Jagdeo’s allegations against the company and assures that he is willing to meet with Government to resolve any issues and would consider hiring an independent auditing firm to investigate the matter.
President Jagdeo at a press conference on Monday chastised the company for alleged breaches of forestry procedures involving collusion among staff of Barama Company Limited, third party concessionaires and staff of the GFC. Jagdeo warned that there would be consequences for the company and the other parties and noted that from preliminary investigations it seems as though there was a plot to defraud the Govern-ment. The investigative team found instances of under-declaration of forest products and false declaration of origins of those products.
The Ministry of Agricul-ture together with the GFC two weeks ago launched an investigation and a report is to be handed to Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud today.
“Barama Company Limited is deeply concerned about today’s news reports on the company’s forestry procedures and its relationship with the Guyana Forestry Commis-sion (GFC). The news reports come as a surprise because as a responsible and law-abiding corporate citizen, we operate within the confines of the law,” Ho said in a statement yesterday. He added that the matter is already a concern to the top management of Samling Group, Barama’s parent company.
He said that based on preliminary investigations, it is his view that the infractions were minor in nature. “Under no circumstances has the company intentionally breached any of the procedures. Perhaps it is just an administrative and reconciliation issue. We are more than willing to engage with the GFC to resolve this concern and find an amicable solution,” Ho said.
The CEO confirmed that the negative publicity may have implications for the company’s forest certification with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which was suspended earlier this year.
He said too that if during the course of the investigations intentional violations are found, the company would not hesitate to take stringent measures to correct the situation. He said that he would fire persons from all levels of the company once they are found culpable.
“We are an open and transparent company and we are eager to get to the bottom of this so that any misunderstanding with the GFC could be cleared up as soon as possible,” the CEO said.
Senior manager at Barama, Neil Chand said that the company has a log tracking system that is comparable to the one employed by the GFC. He said that the system is checked daily to ensure that information can be verified as to volume and species.
According to Chand, the company has third party harvesting arrangements with five concessionaires but exercises no managerial control on these concessions. He said that when the news of the Government investigation broke two weeks ago, the Govern-ment had corresponded with Barama and asked for information on their operations.
Ho said that Barama is committed to sound forest management practices and has been operating in Guyana for over 15 years. “Dur-ing this time of operations, the company has acted in accordance to the law and worked well with the GFC, without any serious non-conformance issues raised. We take a long term view on investments, resulting in the current investment – excluding the road network – of over US$100M,” Ho said.
According to Ho, the company’s long term investment strategy includes reducing log exports, which he said have high shipping costs associated with it. “At the same time, Barama is continually finding new ways to market lesser known Guyanese species on the global market to increase the export of more value-added wood products,” Ho said.
He said that Barama continues to export logs to markets like China, India and Vietnam, as a means to introduce Guyanese species to these growing markets. He said that when the demand and acceptance levels for such products on these markets rise, “we can invest in the appropriate manufacturing facility to produce such wood products from Guyana to the markets. The entire process takes time to develop.”
But he promised that the evidence of additional downstream development will be seen in six months time.
He said that in the past two years Barama has invested US$27M and through these investments, the company expects to increase its volume and variety of exports to the US, Europe, Central America and Caricom countries and create 200 jobs.
Meanwhile, he said that he is about to make changes to the way the company operates in terms of policy with a view to becoming more cost-effective and efficient.
