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Development with a human face

Mar 25, 2012 Editorial

 

The budget is going to be unveiled this Friday and it is going to be scrutinised from many angles. One would be to discern whether President Ramotar will be introducing new initiatives that may suggest he is willing to veer away from the present development model that has guided us for the past two decades. The President has made two, not necessarily contradictory statements, in reference to economic development.
Before the elections, he declared that he would be continuing with the economic programme of his predecessor President Jagdeo. This was not surprising since those policies had delivered consistent GDP growth rates that were at happy variance from his CariCom cohorts.
After his accession to the Presidency, President Ramotar then had occasion to invoke the legacy of Dr. Cheddi Jagan many times. On economic matters, we all know that Dr. Jagan’s heart was unabashedly on the left, but in his actions after he returned to office in 1992, were quite pragmatic – but not expediently so.
For instance, even though the IMF insisted that he continue with the slashing of the Public Service initiated by President Hoyte, he refused because he argued that it would place too great a burden on working people. For similar reasons, he refused to privatise Guysuco. Some believe that President Ramotar, who worked closely and directly with Dr. Jagan for decades, might introduce other initiatives to move further away from the “Washington Consensus” policies that were imposed since 1989.
These policies were based on the neo-liberal faith on the ‘market’ to allocate and distribute resources most efficiently: the ‘rising tide’ unleashed by the privatisation, liberalisation and stabilisation policies would ‘raise all ships’. Without much recourse, we complied dutifully but apart from the stabilisation policies, very little of our gains came from the other two legs of the tripod. Our gains were primarily due to strong governmental intervention into the rebuilding of our infrastructure and rising gold prices.
Guyana having graduated from the embrace of the IMF/World Bank’s conditionalities, President Ramotar now has the opportunity to steer our economic development more towards models which accept that markets need to be guided and regulated by the government to deliver rewards more widely and equitably, as Dr. Jagan would have said, to deliver “development with more of a human face.”
Even in the US, not to mention Europe, there has been acceptance that the regulations that were jettisoned during the nineties under the neo-liberal hegemony, need to be revisited. Our Latin American neighbours, such as Argentina which has one of the highest growth rates in the world, have long thrown off the reins of the Washington Consensus. Their policies – with variations exemplified from Brazil to Venezuela – have been consistently more pro-people. We cannot continue to only rail against greedy ‘capitalists’: we have to alter the system or regime that permits a top-heavy growth that excludes the masses of the people.
The critique and criticisms of equating ‘growth’ with ‘development’ is too old and well known to bear repetition. America, where every Guyanese has a relative that could inform him directly, has had growth but pretty little development. In fact a shocking 13 million Americans are unemployed – and this figure only includes those that haven’t given up looking for work. We have to get back to basics and focus on a ‘development model’ that focuses on the living conditions of the people.
We do not have to look a gift horse in the mouth. To the extent that the IMF/World Bank policies allowed us to build or rebuild our infrastructure, that is to our credit. We now have a platform to move on. This does not even mean that we do not have to build additional infrastructure.
The Amaila Hydro Power project is a good case in point. It can only be justified if it will lead to benefits for most Guyanese: cheaper electricity rates; more jobs from new companies attracted by cheaper and reliable electricity etc.
We are hoping that the budget will offer a glimpse of people oriented development.

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