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…now like a dog chasing its own tail – NagamootooBy Kiana WilburgGuyana already has some $380 billion in Domestic and External debt, said Moses Nagamootoo, Vice Chairman of the Alliance for Change (AFC). He posited that raising Guyana’s debt ceiling from $1B to $150B could place Guyana in a debt trap.He said that it is simply impossible to think that the government would want to add another $150B to Guyana’s current debt without plausible explanation as to the feasibility of a project that could be financed by any such loans.AFC Vice Chairman, Moses NagamootooThe project at hand is the Amaila Falls Hydroelectric project which is touted to be constructed at a cost of US$840 million.Nagamootoo said that the Government is simply playing a game of politics with the Guyanese people by exciting them about the notion of “reduced electricity rates.”He said that the technical aspect of this project should not be overlooked. Many questions still remain unanswered. “How much of a reduction you will have depends on the efficiency of the delivery because we all expected that with the falling prices of oil at the moment that the electricity will go down but as we saw last month the government wanted to raise the electricity rate by 27.6 per cent.“World price was coming down and they were saying that our operating costs are going up. Why is it going up? It is because of inefficiency and not because of fuel prices going up. They have to correct that before they can talk about bringing down the cost of electricity to consumers.“We have figures to show that the cost per megawatt of producing electricity by Amaila far exceeds the cost in several other countries, including Hong Kong.“If the cost of producing it is high then the cost to the consumers would be high as well,” explained Nagamootoo.He said that no one is questioning the dream, the vision or the necessity to have a hydro electricity project. He said that the Opposition has passed that stage.However in a fragile state of just over 750 000 people, Guyana has gone passed its threshold for debt. “Our country has now gone to about $380B, most of which is new debt.The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) likes to talk about the days of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC) and how much the debt was at that time but the last year under Desmond Hoyte, it was $263B.“So we are like a dog chasing its tail in a vicious circle, just going round and round. We spin so fast chasing our tail that we have gone past the $263B and now the Government is talking about raising the ceiling from $1B to $150B.“And they are upset when the Opposition wants more information to justify such. This is not sweetie; it is not grass; it is money because it will be added on to our national debt if the entity or entities on which the investment is made turn out to be unprofitable.”The Member of Parliament continued, “If you do the Arithmetic, as it is now, the debt level per capita is about $500,000 each. As a child is born, before you could even clap the child backside and he says squaw, there is a label or tag of $500,000 attached to that child. You are ultimately born in debt.”The former Government Minister stated that the fact that the President is saying that electricity rates will be reduced by 50 per cent and the Prime Minister is noted to be saying that the reductions will be down by 25 per cent and more fundamentally, the International Development Bank (IDB) cannot assure at this point that the electricity rates will be reduced, it is a classic case that “too many cooks spoil the broth.”He said that the fact that the extent of reduction is unclear indicates that there is confusion among the members of the Government.