Dear Editor,
According to Global Witness, the atrocious deal which Trotman signed with ExxonMobil saw Guyana losing some US$55 billion (fifty-five billion American dollars). At $220 to US$1 this is equivalent to $12,100,000,000,000 (Twelve trillion, one hundred billion Guyana dollars) – my calculator ran out of display space. I will now try to put into context how much money this is and what the same could have paid for in our dear old Guyana. While some of the following might appear on the surface to be funny, I can assure you that, as a Guyanese, there is nothing here to laugh about considering that this is what we have collectively lost as a nation due to Granger, Trotman and the APNU/AFC.
If we were to convert twelve trillion dollars into our highest currency denomination, the “Granger” $5000 bill, it would weigh over 6 million pounds or 2721 metric tons of cold hard cash. If bandits tried to steal such a sum they would need to come prepared with 137 twenty-foot containers.
Guyana’s annual budgetary expenditure estimate is $295.3 billion. With this amount, we could all have afforded sit down and do absolutely nothing and still operate the economy for 41 years. The public sector wage bill is $22.4 billion annually. With twelve trillion dollars, we had enough money to pay public servants for 540 years and grant them a decent bonus too. GRA boasted that it collected $226 billion in taxes in 2019. Our Government could have waived all taxes on all citizens and companies for 53 consecutive years.
Given that APNU/AFC is assiduously working to shut down GuySuCo on the false claim that it is highly indebted, this sum was sufficient to repay the debt, which was $29.9 billion in 2015, 404 times. In other words, GuySuCo could have been bailed out over 400 times. In terms of our national debt, listed at US$1657.8 million as of June 2019, we could have repaid it 33 times.
Twelve trillion would have bought 65 new hydro facilities similar in size and design to Amaila, 220 new Demerara Harbour Bridges, as is being proposed, and 1375 Berbice Bridges. 65 Amaila power plants would have powered the entire South America.
In the context of the $10,000 cash grant, which APNU/AFC took away from our children, we could have given the 167,000 students their $10,000 for 7245 years. Similarly, for our 54,000 pensioners, we could have used this money and paid them that $19,000 monthly, which is what they are presently receiving, for almost 1000 years.
A decent one family house costs around $10 million and a “brand new second-hand” car is around $2.5 million. This money could have built over one million two hundred thousand homes ie more than one home with garage and guard hut for every living Guyanese. By this, I mean each individual, man or woman, boy or girl, could have been given his or her own house. Similarly, it would have bought 5 million cars, which are more than 6 cars for each individual on the voters’ list being prepared by GECOM in addition to everyone under 18 including babies. This is coincidentally the very definition of the vaunted good life promised by Granger and APNU/AFC, which they have surreptitiously “signed away”. If we were to allocate 12.1 trillion to our 750,000 citizens each Guyanese would be a millionaire 16 times over.
It is difficult to visualise the quantity of money which the APNU/AFC cabal has thrown away. In any other country, the entire Administration and their advisors would have been thrown in jail and therefore never see the light of day to trick the people again. This transaction constitutes the largest scam I have ever heard about and I wonder what is going through the minds of those individuals who fell for the promised change in 2015.
Sincerely,
Ravi Ram