US$1B in oil fund

Oct 19, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese are rich beyond belief. That, however, is not the lot of ordinary Guyanese who know only the same old poverty. The struggling family that has to do without some basics, and the many expectant citizens of this country, who hear that they are so wealthy on paper, don’t know of that richness. They are yet to touch and feel this great national oil wealth actually moving from the books and paper down to their level.

There is no doubt these days that we have oil in abundance, and the monies to prove that it is here. Similarly, there is no doubt also that the benefits of this oil wealth have so far eluded the broad masses of the Guyanese population.

There is US$1B in Guyana’s Oil Fund. Multiply that one thousand million American dollars by 200 to obtain the equivalent in Guyana dollars, and the result is a stupefying figure, indeed. Yet there are many Guyanese who don’t have enough in their pockets and purses to buy what is needed to exist above the poverty line, however calculated. For sure, many billions of local dollars have been set aside for infrastructure development, a good thing, and which PPPC Government spokespeople are always delighted to point to, as evidence of national development priorities in action. What is given short thrift is how those same billions for schools, bridges, and roads are the cover under which great political and financial crimes flourish. The spokespeople are oftentimes, among the ones sharing in the crookedness, so they turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the real underlying truths of Guyana, since they are benefiting from the new oil wealth.

Just as certainly a few billion Guyana dollars have trickled down to the nation’s population in dribs and drabs, through cash handouts, relief monies, and a quick, clever helping hand here and there in carefully selected sectors. What does not gain much attention or traction is that when the bloodless infrastructure billions are placed next to those given to the poor and struggling and hurting in Guyana, the majority in the local population, there is no comparison. Aiders and abettors of the PPPC Government, many of them well rewarded for their defensive efforts, or aggressive attitudes, find place to highlight GY$25,000 here and GY$28,000 there, and how much Guyanese should be happy that they have a caring government. What is neatly overlooked is how much goes to the rich, and how little goes to the poor and the nobodies throughout Guyana. Those who can’t afford medicines, who must bypass certain possibly lifesaving treatments, because they just don’t have the money.

The rich receive the contracts for billions to add more to their bankbooks, and in those contracts, huge percentages for thievery are built-in, and huge percentages siphoned off. This is what is shared among cunning politicians, their slick handpicked bureaucrats, their favoured crooked contractors, and the slippery public relations people who try their best to cover-up the trickeries. The rich get more prosperous, while the little people in Guyana get to read about, and hear about, and thrill to, big speeches from leaders and ministers that their turn will come to be passengers sharing in the grand national excursions. The little Guyanese, the working class, those on the lower end of the economic ladder, are still waiting for their day to come, and that US$1B in their Oil Fund will actually mean something to them.

Guyanese poor need what is palpable; they don’t need more promises about future prosperity and how good they will have it. They want some of that good now, for this is what they see happening to those at the higher end of local society. They watch the PPPC Government taking care of their close comrades, and the local struggling taste the bitterness of being without in this land with so much going for it right now. The sharing of national riches doesn’t have to be so one-sided, nor does it have to all at once. Just a little bit at a time makes a world of difference. Let there be more balance in wealth distribution. It is time that ordinary Guyanese feel the richness of being oil producers.

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