Planning for the planners

Sep 16, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

In 2011, there was a minority government in Guyana. The opposition held a slender one seat majority in the National Assembly and used it to pummel the ruling administration.
One of the first targets of the opposition was the passage of the 2012 Budget. One of its first victims was the eradication of the State Planning Secretariat on the grounds that the entity was illegal.
Now the government is indicating its intention to establish planning units in every Ministry. The APNU and the AFC combined to erase the only planning unit which existed in Guyana since the 1980’s. Now the government is being forced to reestablish planning units in every Ministry.
If the former entity was illegal then the opposition had no choice. It could not have been seen to have been supporting an illegal entity. But it just shows the irony of history in that what was dissolved will now have to be reconstructed.
However, the government is not planning on having a singular planning agency like the State Planning Secretariat. It is planning to have mini planning units in every Ministry. This sounds like a plan to extend bureaucracies in every Ministry in Guyana. Would it not have been better to have a single planning unit for the entire country rather than multiple planning units, which may end up only being Budget units within the Ministry?
The skills simply do not exist in Guyana for multiple planning units. Development planning is a science and a small country like Guyana simply cannot afford, nor does it have the human resources to populate planning units in every ministry.
The government has asked the IMF for assistance in reviewing the value added tax (VAT). The government does not have the expertise to determine what changes to the VAT will cost the treasury and has been forced to go to the ‘experts’ to have this done. It shows the paucity of skilled personnel within the system in Guyana. Where then will the skills be found to establish planning units in multiple ministries?
It can only mean that the functions of these planning units will be pared down significantly and they may merely become budget planning units which are far different from what one expects of a planning unit.
The plan to have planning units reflects an act of political desperation. There is frustration within the government over the fact that major sectors in the economy are contracting even though overall growth has been achieved for the first half of 2016. The government is panicking by establishing planning units in ministries in the hope that these will provide a developmental focus.
The historic failure of the State Planning Secretariat, under both the PNC and the PPP, has been that it never provided a developmental focus. The State Planning Unit allowed for centralized planning during the crisis years of the PNC regime. That model did not work. During the PPPC’s tenure, the State Planning Secretariat was effectively an accounting unit charged with implementing the capital programme of the government. It did very little developmental planning.
The developmental focus which the government may be looking for has to come from the political level. It has to begin at the level of Cabinet. That focus has to be ideological, which is now considered an expletive word in developing countries in transition to neo-liberal economies. Technocratic units have never been able to provide that sort of developmental focus. Planning units implement more than they plan. They lack planning skills.
What Guyana needs is a developmental focus to the neo-liberal model of development. The neo-liberal model has led to economic growth but it has not led to economic development. A Planning Unit is not the answer to how growth can trickle down to the poor. It is not the answer to how higher wages can be paid without affecting inflation. It is not the answer to how to create jobs.
The answer to those questions is to have a Ministry of Planning and Development which will co-opt the Ministry of Finance. Planning and development has to begin at the political level. It is an ideological process, not a technical process.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Finance has advertised for a Chief Planning Officer. Will this person be a technocrat or an ideologue?

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