Presentation Without Execution: Selling Region 10 as a Manufacturing Hub While Linden Sits in the Dark

Presentation Without Execution: Selling Region 10 as a Manufacturing Hub While Linden Sits in the Dark

On Wednesday, Chief Investment Officer Peter Ramsaroop stood in Linden and told Region 10 it was moving into “its next level of investment, production and export growth.” He spoke of a manufacturing, transport and logistics hub linking Guyana’s coast, interior and northern Brazil. He cited G$8 billion in approved investment agreements since 2020, hundreds of jobs, new dairy and agro-processing activity.

None of it mentioned the obvious thing sitting in the room.

Region 10 is in the middle of a power crisis. Linden’s electricity supplier has been running rolling blackouts since mid-August, after peak demand tore past the system’s 14.5-megawatt ceiling. Generation has been tripping at Bosai. The Mayor and Town Council convened an emergency town hall over it. An MP has called the situation the result of years of neglect and poor planning. Sawmillers have been asked, by government request, to shift their operations to the hours between 10 p.m. and 11 a.m. because the grid cannot carry them in daylight.

That is the backdrop against which a senior government investment official chose to pitch Linden as the next manufacturing and logistics hub of Guyana.

A bold, brash and unthoughtful pitch

There is a word for going into a region that cannot currently keep its lights on during peak hours and presenting it as ready for manufacturing expansion: disconnected. Manufacturing runs on continuous, reliable power. Cold storage, processing lines, BPO operations — every activity Ramsaroop listed as part of Region 10’s “diversified productive base” depends on exactly the resource Linden does not currently have enough of.

This is not a hypothetical concern raised by critics. It is the government’s own admitted position. Linden’s electricity company has said publicly that it is managing a “critical generation shortfall.” The Public Utilities Minister has said the region’s demand peaks have outstripped supply. Sawmillers — existing industry, not hypothetical future investors — have already been told to work around the shortage rather than through it.

Against that backdrop, telling the region it is entering a new phase of production and export growth is not optimism. It is a failure to read the room, or a deliberate decision not to.

Investment agreements are not the same as electricity

Ramsaroop’s release leans on a specific number: G$8 billion in GO-Invest-approved investment agreements for Region 10 between 2020 and 2026, with local investors accounting for most of it. That figure describes paper commitments accumulated over six years. It says nothing about which of those agreements have actually become operating production, and nothing about how any of it is meant to run on a grid that cannot currently support the industrial demand already in place.

An investment agreement is not a kilowatt. A press release announcing a “next level” is not a solved generation shortfall. If GO-Invest’s own aftercare mandate is to work with investors on “implementation challenges,” the single largest implementation challenge in Region 10 right now is the one nobody at Wednesday’s engagement apparently raised out loud: there is not enough power to run what is already there, let alone what is being promised.

Another crass electioneering ploy

This fits a pattern this outlet has tracked repeatedly: rhetorical presentation substituting for delivery. 

Announce the hub. Announce the next phase. Announce the transformation. Let the cameras record the visit. Leave the underlying infrastructure problem — the one residents are living with in the dark, on a rolling schedule, right now — for another day, another minister, another press release.

Region 10 does not need to be told it is on the verge of a manufacturing renaissance. It needs the government department responsible for its electricity supply to fix the generation shortfall that is currently disrupting daily life and existing industry. Everything else is theater.

Power survives on presentation. Accountability requires execution.