Locals and foreigners are afforded a level playing field in the logging sector, President Donald Ramotar says, a position some locals disagree with and one has labelled the president’s blaming of electricity for the lack of value-added processing of logs as “pure hogwash”.
At the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association luncheon on Wednesday at the Marriott Hotel,
executive of the AH&L Kissoon enterprise, Kim Kissoon took Ramotar to task for saying that electricity was the reason for no value-added processing in the timber industry.
“The argument that electricity is the reason why there is no downstream (processing) in the timber industry is pure hogwash,” Kissoon asserted. “The problem is quality. If you produce, say wamara logs …on which you pay 20% export tax. If you cut it into a square, it is $1050 dollars and the tax is 17%. I don’t know who thinks up these things…you sit down and work it backward. You will see that it isn’t conducive for any manufacturer to do downstream in this country,” he added to applause from most attendees.
Ramotar said that he noted
