Guyana’s human development

With the release of the 2013 Human Development Report (HDR) by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it is hoped that the data on Guyana and the recommendations (implicit or otherwise) will be used by the politicians to guide their posture and position in the budget presentation, which is scheduled to be made soon.
The HDR represents a bold attempt initiated in 1990 to provide a more nuanced picture of the ‘good life’ than that provided by the then prevailing metric of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It was, in a sense, a recognition and rejection of the economism that guided policy makers in favour of the ancient aphorism that ‘man does not live by bread alone’.
Developed by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen, it is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living, and quality of life for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It represented a prolonged struggle by ‘radical’ economists to distinguish ‘growth’ from ‘development’.
It is interesting that a growing new measure of the ‘good life’ addresses the goal of ‘happiness’ and was pioneered by Bhutan, a country also in South East Asia. It would appear that the Eastern notions of the goals of human life are rising to the fore in guiding human endeavour.
After a hiatus in 2012, the 2013 Human Development Report offers a welcome comparative measure of the status of countries, that is not dominated by nebulous subjective factors. The theme of the report is, “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”, which acknowledges the remarkable effort of India, and more so China, to lift almost a billion persons out of poverty in a single decade.
This development has caused the entire report to be reorganised to now distinguish four broad human development categories, each of which comprises 47 countries: Very High Human Development, High Human Development, Medium Human Development, and Low Human Development (46 countries in this category).
Guyana is now classified as a country with ‘medium human development’ which is a far cry from the bottom of the barrel categorisation it was plunged into by 1980, after the experiments of the then People’s National Congress (PNC) regime. Between 1980 and 2012, the country’s Human Development Index (HDI) value increased from 0.513 to 0.636, an increase of 24 per cent or average annual increase of about 0.7 per cent.
It should be noted that, by 1990, when the HDI was initiated, Guyana had sunk below the extrapolated figures for 1980. Guyana is now ranked 118 out of 187 countries with a HDI value 0.636. While Latin America and the rest of the Caribbean have higher scores (excepting Haiti), they were all higher than us in 1980. Guyana had the disadvantage of starting from a very low base.
While acknowledging that Guyana has “done well”, the UNDP local representative suggested that “it’s very important for it to invest really a lot on education, infrastructure and developing the country, for example the interior”.
While in principle, all countries must invest more on education and infrastructure, the statement does not reflect the actual HDI numbers.
For instance, Guyana’s ‘non- income’ HDI is 0.703, which is very close to the “High Human Development” cut off point of 0.712. It is our ‘income index’ of 0.502 that has pulled us down below countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, for instance.
What this means is that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government has done very well on social sector and infrastructural spending. The new investments in hydroelectric power generation (starting with Amaila Falls), the airport and new housing stock will boost this aspect of development even further.
The opposition has to work with the government to move the old traditional ‘growth’ figures upwards. This means investment. If the private sector is skittish because of the political risk due to opposition actions, the government must get involved as it has done with the Marriott project.