A NEW TAG TO ECONOMIC MENDICANCY

Jan 10, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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On May 26, 2009, ironically the anniversary of Guyana’s Independence, the World Bank issued a press release in which it indicated that it had endorsed a new Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) for this country. The World Bank stated in the release that the strategy had been developed in consultation with the government and civil society.
In endorsing the strategy, the Bank seems to have forgotten that the majority of Guyanese have never heard about this CAS nor, more importantly, has our parliament pronounced on it. Yet it has been developed as a blueprint to guide the Bank, and no doubt other donors, interventions and assistance to Guyana. What a travesty! What a mockery of the process of inclusiveness and meaningful consultations which one would have expected to have been the hallmark of the Bank’s interface with this country.
When the General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party makes statements about cooperation between the government and the opposition in parliament, he should be asked how it is that a Country Assistance Strategy has been developed and endorsed by the World Bank for the period 2009-2012 and yet neither the government nor the ruling party has seen it fit to have the highest representative forum in the land, debate this document which sets developmental priorities for the next three years.
The priorities listed in the press release are most interesting. According to the World Bank, the two main strategic areas of support indentified in the Country Assessment Strategy are:
(1) Strengthening environmental resilience and sustainability and (2) Improving education quality and social safety nets.
After having endured years of foreign- designed strategies aimed at reducing poverty, there is an ominous feeling when one reads about improving social safety nets. It conjures images of painful reforms which will impact negatively on the poor, thus necessitating improved safety nets.
The interesting part though is that for 2010, the government through its spokespersons has signaled that strengthening environmental resilience and improving education quality will be key priorities. Thus, the developmental agenda is being set, as has been the case for some time now, by external agencies which have a track record of failed policies in other parts of the world.
But even more interesting is the timing of the Bank’s endorsement of the Country Assistance Strategy and the subsequent launch of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy. The World Bank’s announcement that strengthening environmental resilience and sustainability would be a key strategic area of support was followed 12 days later on June 8, 2009, by the launching of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy which is primarily about mitigation and adaptation, the very issues that are seen as strategic concerns by the World Bank.
This column has argued that the Low Carbon Development Strategy is all part of a new form of economic mendicancy. Developmental assistance needs a new template and this is being provided by the World Bank which has developed a number of funds into which poor countries like Guyana can tap.
Guyana badly needs to find new sources of developmental financing and no doubt sees green financing as critical to ensuring a steady flow of new resources into the economy. The World Bank is keen to lend for environmental projects as part of its organization’s overall strategy in response to climate change. Thus we have a strategy to help Guyana secure the necessary finances to strengthen environmental resilience and sustainability. That strategy is not the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) but rather the Country Assistance Strategy, designed by World Bank consultants in collaboration with the government of Guyana and local civil society. History is instructive as to the outcome and nature of this collaboration.
The LCDS has its special utility. It has the novel feature of seeking to secure finances for Guyana under a REDD+ initiative, something that is not incongruent with the need for mitigation and adaptation. But it is not the LCDS that has pushed us in the direction in which we are going. It is the CAS.
This is the fate to which Guyana has fallen under PPP administrations. The charade therefore about inclusiveness of parliament should stop, because whatever cooperation takes place, it is not considered by the opposition as meaningful since the opposition is engaged only in selective participation.
If the PPP is serious about political cooperation within the National Assembly, it should demand that the World Bank make public the contents of the Country Assistance Strategy which it announced last May 26 that it had endorsed, and it should present this strategy for debate in the National Assembly.
Is the PPP willing to do this or does it have to gain the sanction of the government before it can engage in this debate on the future of Guyana?

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