Blessings in disguise and collateral damage

Apr 23, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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There are lawful and constitutional ways in which a fair portion of the sums not approved in this year’s Budget can be restored. Both the Constitution and the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act provide mechanisms that would allow for some of the funds to be restored.
The Minister of Finance and the legal advisers of the government may already be exploring these options with a view to ensuring that the work of critical government agencies is not affected.
The fact that such restoration may not receive parliamentary approval does not make them illegal. All it would mean is that parliamentary consent was not received.
But notwithstanding the flexibilities afforded by the Constitution and the law to the Minister of Finance in restoring sums that were not part of the Appropriations Bill, not all of the funds can be restored.
There will be causalities. These include collateral damage to some agencies which were not intended targets of the opposition parties, but which because they were lumped together with sums which the opposition disapproved, could not be given consent.
One of those casualties will be the Guyana Energy Authority. The government will have to find a way to restore funds to allow this agency to undertake its regulatory role, but the opportunity can be used to prune this institution and pass off some of its functions to line ministries.
Another is likely to be the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest). A great many students are also not likely to gain admission into the University of Guyana, since the funds for their student loans were not approved in the Budget.
Those students will have to find the monies to pay to the University, as financing for the student loans will not be available.
It is a painful reality, but that is the nature of politics. The opposition did not intend to cut these funds, but since they wielded the axe on financing for the Ministry of Finance, then the student loan financing became part of the collateral damage.
Some of the causalities should be seen as a blessing in disguise. GO-Invest really needs to be downgraded to desk duties within the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Commerce. That agency has not worked as anticipated and is never likely to be a one-stop agency for investors.
Government bureaucrats obsessively guard their turf and do not like others to try to be forcing them to act at a pace other than which they are accustomed to acting.
For an agency such as GO-Invest to work effectively it requires a revolution in the way the other government departments with which they do business operate. Those agencies are not prone or organized to be business-friendly and therefore there will always be bottlenecks outside of the control of GO-Invest.
The non-approval of funds for GO-Invest should be seen as an opportunity for this entity to be shut down and its functions incorporated under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Commerce.
Another blessing in disguise is the non-approval of funds for the Institute of Applied Science and Technology. This is an agency which a few years ago had boasted about developing a new model which would have seen it undertake research and development for the private sector. Now that funding has not been approved for the fiscal year 2014, the IAST can pursue its model of undertaking research for the business class and charge that class for the work it does. It is a good time for it to be weaned off of government financing or closed down all together.
One of the regrettable cuts was to the One Laptop Per Family Initiative. It is accepted that this project was mired in controversy over the way the contract for the supply of the computers was awarded. But having passed that stage, the opposition parties should have had their ears to the grounds and should have realized what a difference the OLPF has been making to the lives of poor children whose parents could not afford to buy them a computer.
The benefits of the computers so far distributed are going to be felt in three years’ time when the use of the computer begins to impact on the school grades of the recipients. Tens of thousands of children who never would have been able to own a computer now do so because of the OLPF.
And can you imagine the disappointment of the other tens of thousands who are awaiting their turn.
This was one programme that should not have been cut, because it deprives poor children of the opportunity to improve their grades in school by having access to a tool which can make them perform better in the classroom.
But that is the nature of slash and burn politics. Some good things will be destroyed in the process.

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