The International Monetary Fund (IMF) offers a report card, so to speak, on the economic performance of its members towards the end of the year. It does this even if the country is not participating in one of its adjustment programmes, such as those Barbados and Jamaica are presently executing, to stabilise their economies.
Its report for Guyana is extremely encouraging and should bring cheer to the citizenry for the Christmas season.
According to the figures, Guyana continues to make steady progress on the economic front. Most citizens would have known this from their own experience, but very sadly because of the opposition’s constant “doom and gloom” reportage through the media they control, their eyes are directed at the “ half-empty” cup, not the “half-full” identical one.
For instance, the IMF has confirmed that the economy has grown continuously for the last seven years at an average rate of over four per cent. One could compare this to the almost nine per cent achieved by China over the same period – as the opposition parties have done – but they do not point out that this is an exceptional – and unique – achievement.
It could be better compared to the less than one per cent growth rate achieved by Barbados in the last few years, or the 1.5 per cent for Trinidad and Tobago this year, with no relief in sight.
But what does this “economic growth” rate mean for the average person? Most pertinently, it has implications for citizens to be gainfully employed and to determine the contours of their living conditions. As the Labour Ministry reported, almost everyone who is willing to work and is willing to be trained for the available jobs can find employment.
In every growing economy, there will never be a perfect fit between the jobs created and the skills demanded for those jobs. It is up to individuals to be retrained for the available jobs.
Right now, for instance, the public servants are marching for a 15 per cent salary increase as opposed to the five per cent the government granted them. This can be contrasted to the layoff of 3000 public servants in Barbados to address the challenge of their slumping economy.
Historically, the public service was seen as a sinecure for individuals that imbibed the traditional academic education.
Our public service became additionally bloated during the People’s National Congress (PNC) cooperative experiment of 1970-1988.
With the ignominious collapse of that experiment, the IMF had initiated downsizing of the public service and the PNC under Desmond Hoyte made large “retrenchment” cuts between 1989 and 1992 This was intended to rationalise the staffing of the public service to match the needs of the new, free-market economy.
The People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/ C) government, under Dr Cheddi Jagan, however, halted the downsizing effort on attaining office in 1992. Consequently, rationalisation of the public service has never been consummated.
The government’s five per cent grant exceeds the 3.4 per cent inflation rate announced by the IMF for Guyana in 2013 and therefore, the opposition is being irresponsible and provocative in claiming the living standards of public servants have deteriorated. The IMF also called for the efficiency of “public enterprises” to be increased and this call can also include the public service.
If wages are increased out of step with productivity, then inflationary pressures would be created, which should wipe out the effects of salary increases. If it were not for the political opportunism of the opposition and its affiliated Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU), our public service would have been downsized and simultaneously upgraded in the skills demanded in the modern economy.
Rather than accepting this reality and dealing with it frontally with the GPSU, the government has had to employ skilled “contract workers” to fill the gap. The GPSU, which wants to have its cake and eat it too, has not surprisingly been very critical.
To achieve higher growth rates and higher standards of living, all Guyanese workers will have to increase their productivity.
