The Alliance for Change (AFC) says the decision of the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) Government to terminate contract discussions with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCECL) raises “serious issues of due process, contract evaluation and probity by the administration”.
AFC General Secretary and former Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson says that the announcement on Tuesday that the government had terminated talks with the Chinese contractor and moved to the next bidder on the replacement of the Demerara Bridge was “suspicious and requires a proper, detailed and coherent explanation”.
In a statement today, Patterson said the initial reason given by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, that the financing costs were too high is “rubbished” by the project evaluation process, which the cabinet received and granted in a no-objection approval to the Ministry of Public Works to engage CSCECL from November 2021 based on a Design-Build-Finance (DBF) model.
Patterson said, “For the country to believe the Vice President, now raises questions as to why in November he clearly stated that the financial terms and conditions would be no less favourable than those submitted in the preferred bidder’s price proposal and that the construction cost of US$256.6 million was the lowest among all bidders.”
Patterson said that the project was shovel-ready during the APNU+AFC government, but the new PPP government chose to discard all the work and restart from scratch.
Patterson should read (or get someone who is capable of reading to him) about these Chinese companies. They loan enormous amounts of monies to countries, knowing that in the end the debts cannot be repaid and assets will be taken over.
A classic case is the port in Sri Lanka which now belongs to the Chinese as Sri Lanka was unable to repay the debt. Read “how China got Sri Lanka to cough up a Port” on the internet.
The cheapest is not the best. This government has people with brains; they figured out what will happen in the long run.
But of course, there is a race or tribe of creatures which feel otherwise.