Latest update July 23rd, 2026 12:30 AM
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THE PNCR DISCOVERS CAPITALISM
Welcome to capitalism! The PNCR may be a late-comer to the virtues of the market but it sure is not lost on what has been achieved when markets are open. People are freer; what matters is not the control that the state exercises over the economic affairs of the nation but the freedom to trade without permits, free to make money, free to lose money.
That is capitalism for you. Not everyone will benefit in the same way. And this has to be recognized. Capitalism is based on the survival of the fittest and the fittest is not always the best.
Capitalism is now enjoying its third coming. World trade is booming. Nations are becoming richer. The boom may have been dampened by the financial crisis, the problems of Portugal, Greece and Italy may have stirred illusions that the bubble was about the burst and that capitalism was about to implode.
The problems of Portugal, Greece and Italy are not the problems of the world. The global recessions may have hit hard, but the past twenty years have been by any standards remarkable for the world, just like the fifties and sixties were. There are many countries that are doing remarkable well and there are many corporations within affected countries that have emerged as world beaters. Google and Facebook are just the most prominent and better known examples but there are many more that are trendsetters and are making huge profits regardless of the state of the economy.
To survive the competition, countries have to be ready because the world is not waiting on anyone. Guyana should have been sitting and waiting ready to jump on the waves of change that have swept the world since the final decade of the 20th century. Guyana was not ready.
It was not socialism that was the problem. China it must be recalled was communist. Look what it has achieved. China has done well, not because it has opened up. China is not an open society. China did well because it positioned itself to benefit from this global boom in trade. China had the savings and the ability to adapt and this is why it is such a powerhouse in the global economy today.
But what about Guyana. Socialism left us bankrupt but it was not socialism that was the problem, it was the parasitic nature of socialism that was the problem, one that deprived the nation of the level of national savings that are required to take advantage of the changes in the world.
When Guyana should have been ready to become a regional player, it found itself having to repair decades of neglect and destruction caused by reckless and misguided economic and political policies.
Those mistakes have in great measure been undone but Guyana is still too far behind to catch up with the world and benefit from the boom in trade.
Guyana now believes that it can become a model state overnight by investing in technology, thus all the talk about information technology. That bubble too was burst some years ago. For what purposes are we integrating ourselves with the rest of the world, just to say that we are integrating? This is the most fundamental shortcoming of the PPP administration. It has some good ideas, it is a trend follower since it knows it cannot be a trend setter, but for purpose is it following the rest of the world? Just to be in the pack?
Or does it see itself as being able to surge forward eventually.
Guyana will surge forward. There is no doubt about that. The developments that have taken place within the local economy over the past twenty years will ensure that Guyana never again suffers the fate backsliding.
But the gap between Guyana and the rest of the world or more realistically the rest of the Caribbean cannot be narrowed not even with the discovery of oil.
Growing at the rate we are at present will take Guyana 18 years to double its per capita GDP, eighteen years and we would still be behind those smaller islands of the Caribbean.
We would not have been in this position had it not been for that backward model of socialism that was foisted on Guyana by the PNC.
It is good therefore that the PNC has had a moment, an epiphany and has come around to recognise the virtue of the free market. Perhaps if that was recognised forty years ago when Guyana set out on the path to build some unsuited model of socialism, we would not have been where we are today, still in the race but at the back of the back.
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