A BLUE CHRISTMAS

Jan 16, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The private sector commission is sending a message to the political parties in Guyana: do not expect too much this elections season.
A survey of businesses recently revealed that sales were poor during the peak Christmas season. This is a perennial complaint by private businesses. Things are always bad. I have heard the business community come out and say that things are good. None of them are closing down. They enjoyed their Christmas despite the claims that business was poor. Some of the owners of some businesses even spent their holidays abroad. Yet we hear that business was bad.
Bad business is usually attributed to a poorly performing economy. The economy did not perform poorly. And those businesses that complained about a blue Christmas surely cannot lay the blame for their alleged poor sales on the government. After all, the government, as is the case each year, pumped billions into the economy by granting back pay and bonuses to public servants, police and soldiers. Ninety per cent of that money is likely to have gone into the coffers of private businesses.
Those private businesses that usually complain about a decline in sales, and how business was not good, usually have a scapegoat. Privately this year, they were saying that it is Chinese that were responsible for their reduced sales. The GRA would be in a better position to shed light as to whether there was an increase in goods imported by the local commercial sector. If there was an increase, then it means there was the demand, and this would make a falsity of the claims that it was the competition from the many Chinese-owned business that are responsible for their alleged decline in sales volumes.
The Private Sector Commission did not this week echo the concerns that are being expressed by private businessmen. They did not complain about either the fair or unfair competition from Chinese-owned businesses. Instead, they said that it was cross-border smuggling that represented the latest threat to business activity in Guyana.
When the Private Sector Commission speaks, it usually speaks in the name of big business and it is clear that some big businesses had declining revenue. It was reported, for example, that the profits of one of the country’s leading beverage companies suffered a decline in profits of close to ten per cent. In a growing economy this is a precipitous decline in profits and, of course, a scapegoat has to be found; and the scapegoat is cross-border smuggling.
Perhaps the Head of the Guyana Revenue Authority would like to sit down with the Private Sector Commission so that the captains of industry can share with him what intelligence they have that would have allowed them to conclude that it was competition from goods smuggled across our borders that was posing a threat to established businesses.
The bottom line is that if the commercial sector is complaining and if big business in industry and manufacturing are complaining, then the political parties are not going to receive the sort of donations they may expect when the time comes for them to solicit funds for their election campaign.
The private sector is signaling that business was bad, and therefore profits are bad. And if profits are bad, do not expect them to give as generously as they did in the past when it comes to elections.
That is going to be bad news for both APNU and the AFC, because they depend on these donations to finance their election campaign. The PPP, however, has no such problem. They do not need any money from the traditional private sector. The PPP can do without such money, because they have the oligarchy to finance exclusively their election campaign, which this time around they have smartly put into competent hands.
The same businesses that complain about poor sales over Christmas will find a way to give a donation to the PPP and to the opposition parties as well. This is how it works. These businesses do not see their campaign funds that they give as representing their support for any political party. It is merely an investment to secure their interests, regardless of who wins. And so they will give to all sides.
But not as generously as before. After all, they had a blue Christmas.

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A BLUE CHRISTMAS

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A BLUE CHRISTMAS

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