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Jordan blames NCM for failure to enact debt legislation but passes 17 bills after motion
Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, is blaming the no-confidence motion (NCM) for his failure to pass debt management legislation and, by extension, his management of Guyana’s debt.
However, the record shows that the National Assembly approved several laws after the no-confidence motion was passed.
Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan
Jordan was, in making the statements, responding to a letter in a daily which appeared critical of the Government’s management of the economy under COVID-19.
Though the writer made no mention of debt, the Minister saw the need to say that government’s efforts to manage debt were derailed by the NCM.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “our efforts to formalise domestic debt arrangements, by way of a public debt management legislation and ensuing regulations, which would see the issuance of longer term instruments to finance domestic debt, was derailed by the no-confidence motion.”
The NCM was passed on December 21, 2018. Subsequently, four sittings of the National Assembly were held in 2019.
Jordan’s claim is that the motion inhibited formalization of legislation. However, the Assembly passed 17 Bills in 2019 and carried 10 Motions.
Notably, on January 3, the Assembly approved 12 Bills, including the Natural Resource Fund Act, and three Motions. On April 26, the Assembly passed one motion. On May 15, the Assembly passed five Bills, and six Motions. A sitting of the Assembly was even held on May 23.
Parliament was not dissolved until December of 2019 to facilitate the elections.
Meanwhile, debt continued to rack up so much that 2019 ended with US$1.3B in external debt. The Ministry was quick to excuse the figure in its recent updated End of Year Outcome Statement, by stating that the debt is actually 4.7 percent below the projected amount of approximately US$1.4.B.
Overall, external public debt accounted for 77.3 percent of the total public debt stock as at December 31, 2019.
Turning its attention to the domestic public debt stock, the Ministry had noted that this stood at US$383.6 million, which is 7.1 percent below the US$412.8 million projected at Budget 2019.
This variance was primarily attributable to principal repayments on some fiscal Treasury bills, which matured but were not reissued. The share of domestic public debt was 22.7 percent of the total public debt stock, as at the end of 2019, 0.4 percentage points below the Budget 2019 projection.
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