Gabon oil reforms to take time: Bongo

local labour quotas in the country’s oil sector, the move could only be phased in with proper training.
Last October’s announcement that all executive posts and 90 percent of total positions should be filled by Gabonese workers unsettled a sector which has long relied on expatriates, with some fearing it could hinder future investment.
But trade unions who cheered the move have since complained the “Gabonisation” law is not being implemented quickly enough and are threatening strike action that could disrupt production in the some 250 000-barrels-per-day industry.
The main ONEP union moved one step closer to a general strike on Monday, saying it would call the strike to commence at midnight March 27 if the government had not by then issued a decree regulating expatriate labour.
“I can understand some of my fellow Gabonese being very impatient. I myself am very impatient. But you also have to give time,” Bongo told Reuters during a trip to London, speaking before ONEP made the call at a news conference in the Gabonese capital Libreville.
“It is also important that this goes along with a training programme,” he said in the interview. I do not want a bad Gabonisation . . . I want a nice pace, but a progressive one.”
The rule was always seen posing a problem for foreign firms such as Total, Shell, and Tullow who were given two years to fully adjust.
Oil accounts for around half of Gabon’s US$14,5 billion-a-year economy, a dependence it is trying to reduce through an economic diversification programme. – Reuters.