A most erroneous editorial

Apr 30, 2018 Letters

Dear Sir,
The Ministry of Finance finds your Editorial of April 26, 2018 ‘Miscarriage of the Economy,’ alarmist at best and uninformed at worse.
While we welcome the discussions about the performance of the economy – indeed, those discussions have been more robust of recent – this writer attempts commentary on a number of issues with scant data and no analytical rigour to support and or validate the conclusions reached.
It was a mere few days ago, on April 24, that the Ministry of Finance had cause to respond to similar issues raised in Peeping Tom’s “The Guessing Game”. We had hoped that having debunked the falsities contained in that column, more care would have been taken by the Editorial Department to not have similar unsubstantiated opinions find their way into your publication.
But, alas, it was wishful thinking, and, once again, the public is treated to another piece of uninformed ‘journalism’, which, instead of educating, appears to have the sole purpose of creating confusion in the public’s mind.
For the record, the 2.1 percent real growth rate for 2017, as reported in the End of Year Outcome Statement for 2017, is not “the lowest growth rate in decades” as the Editorial suggests.
A cursory look at just the immediate past decade will reveal that growth, in 2008, was 1.8 percent. If the writer took the time to go back one more decade (1998-2007), he/she would have found about half a dozen instances where growth rates were recorded below 2 percent or even negative; for example, growth in 1998, 2000 and 2003 were recorded at -1.7 percent, -1.4 percent and -0.6 percent, respectively.
This misrepresentation by the writer constitutes a blatant abuse of the press and a disregard for its concomitant responsibilities to the public, especially with regard to truth and integrity.
The author of the editorial failed again to uphold the basic principles of a responsible press when pronouncing on the growth rate for 2016. Had he/she done so, he/she would have noted that the Ministry’s letter of April 24, published in KN, fact-checked Peeping Tom’s figures.
The absence of this basic principle of writing resulted in the editorial being infected with the same inaccuracy as Peeping Tom’s. This can no longer be viewed as a mistake but as a deliberate attempt to use trumped-up data to paint a false and gloomy picture of the economy.
This conclusion is substantiated later in the editorial where the Honourable Minister of Finance is alleged to have said that the economy will grow by less than 2 percent in 2018. This can easily be debunked. A quick check of the 2018 Budget Speech, which can be accessed on the Ministry’s website (www.finance.gov.gy), will reveal that projected growth for 2018 is 3.8 percent. However, in a recent press briefing, the Minister alluded to a likely shortfall in sugar production and the impact the US sanctions could have on RUSAL’s bauxite operations in Guyana.
He indicated that these actions could see the 2018 growth rate being revised downwards, though that possible action will have to await the half year review of the economy. The Ministry of Finance will not repeat its previous comments on its forecasting capability, since they have already been ventilated publicly. Also, no effort will be wasted in commenting on the latter half of the Editorial, for which the sole basis of the person’s contention is the false data reported in the first half.
Contrary to the Editorial’s pessimism, the Ministry is optimistic that the economy’s performance in 2018 would be better than in 2017.
We continue to encourage informed, rigorous analysis of the economy that is the product of due diligence and research. Published data is readily available on the websites of the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Guyana, and in the Article IV Publications of the International Monetary Fund.
Yours faithfully,
Wanita Huburn
PRO
Ministry of Finance

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