I am not hopeful about the 2017 Budget

Nov 29, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The 2017 Budget has been read. Let us just think about who needs help from this budget the most:
1. The youths who have finished high school and university but do not have a job and are worried about their employability and their economic future. Are they going to live with Daddy all their lives?
2. Those that do have a job, but are worried about their job security as the economy weakens.
3. Those that have a home but are worried about their economic situation and whether they will be able to pay off their mortgage.
4. The private sector needs tax relief so that they can invest more and create more jobs. The Corporation Tax has to be reduced to 25% and soon.
This Budget has to be about helping the ordinary people, not the rich and wealthy Hamilton Greens and Moses Nagamootoos of Guyana with extravagant pensions and mansions. This budget has to be about raising the minimum wage to $65,000 per month and the tax-free threshold to $75,000 per month so that more people at the bottom of the economic ladder can secure a fighting chance in climbing up the ladder.
This 2017 Budget must be about building more affordable homes, call them condo or “sondo”, it matters not, just build them. Let us stop all the talking and start converting these ideas into action. But I am not sure if an aging leader out of touch with modern times is capable of delivering on this mandate. Let us start the project of building 1,000 new affordable homes for the people like teachers, nurses, public servants and policemen, now; not in 2019. But we all know Hammie as CHPA Head is incapable of doing this and most of the money will be wasted by 2018 on this housing project.
But none of this is possible if underneath all of it, we are not growing the economy at 5% and above. This is the area in which the Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has failed resoundingly. He remains clueless at how to grow the Guyanese economy above 5%. He has failed miserably to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors like Carl Greenidge, Asgar Ally, Bharat Jagdeo, Saisanarine Kowlessar and Ashni Singh who all have years under their belt in which the economy grew by more than 5%. He just has not exhibited the intellect to date to illustrate that he is aware of what needs to be done to achieve this deliverable.
Rather than being a bullish bureaucrat, we need a Minister who has the innovative ideas to invest in the right initiatives, at the right time, with the right resources to deliver the right outcome for the people today. This strategic skill set continues to evade our sitting Minister of Finance, Mr. Jordan. What a shame that Guyana could not have elevated Carl Greenidge to be Guyana’s Minister of Finance because of a political differences.
Since then we should have known we have an “ordinary” in charge of the nation, who continues to pursue ordinary policies and they adversely affect the welfare of the nation and he calls that patriotism. Patriotism was not at work when Carl Greenidge who continues his job at Foreign Affairs and should have been at the Finance Ministry. Is the President out of ideas on how to run the country?
So we heard another long and boring Budget speech? We heard about what the key drivers for the 2017 economy are. Are we going to hear about what strategy will be put in place to overcome the obstacles to progress? Are we going to hear about what the government will do to deliver on the “MUST-WINS” for economic transformation to happen such as expanding our renewable energy portfolio? In a matter of days now we will see, but I am not very hopeful and here is why.
I am not very hopeful that they can deliver better in 2017 because we have too many square pegs in round holes across the length and breadth of the Granger administration. Incompetence and pettiness are running amok across the Granger administration and the more they populate the administration with straight jacket ex-GDF officers, the more they will fail because these men are not innovators; they are followers of orders and that is not how you run a country. There are very few bright lights that have survived and those who we thought had some brain and personal integrity like Khemraj Ramjattan and Raphael Trotman have now morphed into full-time political opportunists.
So slowly but surely, the Granger administration is transforming into a government for the executive pension, executive perks, executive trips, and executive pay. The working people of Guyana will be asked to bend their backs even more to dish out even bigger remuneration packages for the FAT CATS of the Granger administration.
Good luck to the poor and the working class in 2017, it will be a long and tough year of economic exploitation and oppression as a small cabal of the politically connected people gets richer and the poor gets poorer, compliments of the Granger administration. The poor must rest assured that David Granger has done a very good job of fooling them in the 2015 elections. Fool them once, that is a mistake on the part of the people, but do we think the people will be fooled twice?
Surujdai Lilmohan

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