AN UNWISELY DISCARDED PLAN

May 04, 2018 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Guyanese who migrated during the 1960s and 1970s and who return home, having not done so for decades will be struck by the various changes they witness: major roadways; once small towns have become bustling urban centres, sprawling housing schemes now occupy lands where there was miles of sugar cane or swamp. They are also likely to be struck by the inadequate community and health services, declining educational system, lack of street lights, less than organised transportation system, lack of employment opportunities and an uncomfortably high level of despondency among youths.
The current government continues to wrestle each year with budgetary shortfalls and the overwhelming demands and needs for funds. But it must make the prudent decisions to prioritize which problems are to be solved. At present, there is a piecemeal economic development plan to guide these decisions, to develop and diversify the economy, create jobs, reduce poverty and provide the promised better life for all.
In the late 1960s, the then government developed a national economic development plan to transform and diversify the economy, improve infrastructure, health care and educational services and to subsequently feed, house and clothe the nation. The aim of the plan was to make the small man a real man so that he could be the master of his own destiny.
It was the first national economic development plan in the country following its independence in May 1966. It was designed to guide government agencies in the planning and implementation of infrastructure development, expand water and electrical systems, improve the construction of houses, schools, health facilities, provide first-rate social services and attract foreign investment.
It was a sound plan in that it provided a detailed assessment of what had existed at a time when there was a drift of rural migration into the urban centres and the economic and social pressures that it created. It compiled an inventory of the physical assets and resources across the country, and laid out a matrix of how they could be utilized to develop the economy and the country. By improving the quality of life in the rural areas, it was hoped that the plan would have suppressed the need and urge for individuals to migrate to the urban centres in search of a better life.
The national development economic plan synchronized the agricultural and mining sectors with industrial development which provided better employment opportunities. It gave investors and developers a guide as to where to locate their companies. It provided social, community and cooperative development and allowed investors to see Guyana as an orderly country with cities and towns connected to and servicing the small villages.
It was an integrative and interactive economic development plan which provided relevance and guidance to the country’s development objectives and the measures pursued to realize them. The national economic development plan was in essence a blueprint for making Guyana the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and to do business.
For reasons that remain buried in the politics of the 1990s when the PPP assumed power, the plan was entirely discarded and replaced by one that denuded the important social and economic development dimension that was part of the original plan – possibly because of lack of vision. As a result, an economic crisis befell the country and with it emerged a number of unplanned developments which the PPP administration had to regularize with the allocation of scarce resources that yielded way below optimum value in an attempt to bring order to disorder. No viable national economic development plan has since emerged.

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