A section of the House on Day Two of the 2012 Budget debate
Housing Minister Irfaan Ali has criticised some of the opposition proposals for this year’s budget, dubbing them unrealistic and overly ambitious. Speaking on the opening day of the budget debate, Ali warned that Guyana’s continued progress and development can easily be reversed by the proposed policies, poor economic vision and political ambitions of some members of the opposition who are seeking to score cheap political points, instead of “putting Guyana and the interest of its people first”.
Ali, who led the government benches during the debate, said that Guyana can ill-afford at this time in its history to return to the dark days of autocratic leadership and a country that was largely characterised by poor economic policies, continued social decline, high levels of mismanagement, corruption, high inflation rates, and stagnation.
“It is no secret that our post-colonial growth story has been one of decline and stagnation. Guyana was not always the second poorest country in the hemisphere… but when the opposition grabbed power…, they brought our economy tumbling down…. we cannot afford to return there,” Ali reasoned.
The minister said the budget as presented by Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh paved the way for continued growth and development, noting that it focused on guaranteeing the Guyanese public a better standard of living that could be sustained based upon “realistic projections and estimates”.
Minister Ali said that all Guyanese can now boast of a better standard of living, increased access to financing and loans, improved assets base, social development and economic empowerment.
He said that this is so because the PPP/ C has built all of its policies, including the budget, not on the opportunistic demands of some of the masses who are egged on by egotistic politicians but on its long-term vision for the country’s overall development and the social upliftment of all the people.
Housing Minister Irfaan Ali
“The honourable member, Carl Greenidge has called for us to increase the minimum wage by 20 per cent, but he has not told us how he would do this or what would be the impact and consequences of taking such a move or risk,” Ali remarked while making the point that the opposition was making unrealistic demands that they could not have supported in a sustained way economically were they in government.
He said that the opposition was displaying “hypocrisy” and “double standards” when they speak about reducing the Value Added Tax, reducing taxes, increasing pensions, without first acknowledging the amount of progress that has been in several of these areas that continue to benefit from significant increases year after year. “We are still not satisfied on this side of the House, but we must balance political ambition with economic prudence,” Ali warned, acknowledging that government agreed that there is a lot more to be done but increasing everything that was low and decreasing everything that was seemingly high was certainly not the answer.
The minister believed that the APNU Member of Parliament Carl Greenidge should never speak on issues related to accountability and good economic policies or vision, because he was finance minister when the country experienced a prolonged period of economic decline and hardships that tormented the Guyanese people during the 1980s.
“Indeed, this period was often described as the lost decade… when the minimum wage was fell from US$ 2.89 to US$ 1.00 in 1989…. when the country’s external debt was moved from US$ 639 million to US$ 1391 million at the end of 1989,” Ali said.
The minister also took Greenidge to task over his continued rhetoric about mismanagement of state resources, secret and questionable deals, and brought to the House’s attention several deals which occurred under the PNC-led government that allegedly robbed the state blind of taxpayers monies and resources.
“Let me remind you now,” he stated, arguing that the opposition were pretending to be pure and without blemish.
Ali noted the questionable rush to privatisation during the period 1989 to 1992, as he mentioned startling facts about the Demerara Woods Limited deal, the Guyana Timbers deal, the National Paints Company Limited transaction which were allegedly controversial and received negative press attention under Greenidge’s stewardship.
Other deals mentioned were the GRMMA complexes deal, the Guyana Telecommunication Corporation deal and several rainforest concessions that were issued to a select few, businesses that were allegedly badly negotiated in haste because the economy was on the verge of financial collapse and facing IMF penalties because of alleged mismanagement.
“Yet they want to lecture us now about accountability and transparency. The double standards are blinding but we have nothing to hide and nothing to be afraid of,” he emphasised.
“But I want to say to you all that based upon the results of government programmes over the last six years, there should be no reason for changing course at this juncture in our history. Instead we should continue to pursue programmes and policies as set out in the 2012 budget in order to achieve the following national priorities,” he advised, listing the creation of jobs, the provision of housing, transformation of the economic base, improvement of the competitiveness of the economy, improvement in the human capital and the delivery of quality social services.
