The “Good Life” budget

On Monday, the new A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change coalition Government presented its first budget to the National Assembly under the theme “A Fresh Approach to the Good Life in a Green Economy”.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan used most of his presentation to attack the previous People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government while articulating his Government’s plan to develop the country over the next five years under a new brand of governance that will hopefully agar well for all Guyanese. While boasting about how the new Government responded to three crisis-like situations, Minister Jordan announced Government’s intention to increase public servants pay by five per cent while adjusting the minimum wage to Gy$50,000.

Among the things announced by Jordan were the transfers of billions of dollars to the rice and sugar industries as bailouts to meet the operating costs and debt incurred by those industries, the relaxation of taxes for some mining equipment and commodities, promises to reduce the  unnecessary bureaucratic procedures when doing business with the State, and hikes in Old Age Pensions, public assistance along with the return of subventions to trade union bodies.

The Minister also confirmed that the new Government has no intention of continuing to subsidise the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and was certainly not proceeding any further with the Amaila Falls Hydro Power Project as designed by the PPP/C. He also hinted to the Administration’s desire to make “hard” decisions after the completion of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Commission of Inquiry, the scrapping of the NIS Board, reduction of the Berbice Bridge toll and more monies to go into health, education and public works.

Strangely, Minister Jordan’s presentation was premised on ensuring that the country’s wealth is distributed equally so that all can enjoy his Government’s notion of a “good life”. He spoke at lengths about inclusivity, inquests into this and that, the need to ensure that the country reaches its full developmental potential and the fundamentals governing micro and macroeconomic stability.

Why was the budget so big if the new Administration spent three months axing corruption and pursuing the siphoning off of contracts? Why did the Minister fail to mention his Government’s decision to heavily subside the National Communications Network and the Government Information Agency? Why wasn’t time spent exposing the parallel economy which the new Government claimed existed under the PPP/C?

Minister Jordan said little or nothing about his Government’s plan to improve the lives of Amerindians as this country’s first peoples. They were completely ignored and treated as non-existent apart from a few by-the-way references. Where will the thousands of fired Amerindians find jobs?

The budget was poor on job creation for young people and even poorer when it came to explaining how the new Government plans to boost the potential of youths as far as enabling them to have the socio-economic power to afford the “good life”. Is not okay to spend Gy$1.7 billion on furnishing teachers with laptops and say absolutely nothing about how the Government plans to use youth as the drivers of its modern Information Communication Technology platform.

The Minister failed to tell the country that the public works proposals that he piloted as his Government’s were conceptualised, designed or about to be implemented by the PPP. For example the road link and expansion projects, deep water harbour, dredging of the Demerara River, building farm to market roads at Parika and elsewhere are all PPP/C initiatives.

Budget 2015 was weak on social reforms for the people. Women and girls again were significantly neglected in the Minister’s presentation. No announcements of short-term empowerment initiatives and benefits for single mothers or abused women were announced. Surely, women must matter and people should not have to investigate budget documents to see what will be done.

The new Government with all of the security experts at its disposal must understand that providing people with imposed and in some instances paltry salary wages and negotiations because it was a manifesto promise cannot result in them enjoying in a permanent way a good life.

Why wasn’t Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union’s Training College given a subvention too when the Government decided to return the same to Critchlow Labour College which was badly mismanaged and infiltrated by greedy Guyana Trades Union Congress officials?

Citizens cannot enjoy a good life unless the new Government can end their continued and now monotonous rhetoric about fighting crime and literally do so. Scores of innocent people are dying, being robbed and beaten by criminals because the Government’s incompetence in this area.

The Private Sector deserves more than platitude and commitments to do this and that, there should have been a clearer and precise plan as to how the Government proposes to create avenues for its growth, expansion and domestic investment in the country.

Also, for the first time there was no legislative agenda outlined by the Finance Minister in the 2015 Budget. What is clear is that all of these things may be drafted along as the Government matures in office.

Government has to think through some of the fanciful proposals, and the short and long-term socio-economic underpinnings that will follow suit. The budget must make total and complete economic sense and must fall within a local, regional and international framework that is based on Government’s modern philosophy of how to create wealth in the modern economic era.

It seems as though the new Government while in pursuit of the good life, which is from all indications so far a temporary phenomenon, has failed to pursue a competent socio-economic and political philosophy.