US$1B is an incredible amount

Jul 22, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – One billion US dollars is a world of money for Guyana. One billion US dollars is 1,000 million American dollars. One million American dollars is the approximate equivalent of GY$200 million. It follows, therefore, that 1,000 million US dollars is 200,000 million (GY$200,000,000,000) or 200 billion in Guyana currency.

In whatever way anyone feels comfortable bunching it into –millions or billions of Guyanese dollars, it is a fantastic amount for a once poor country like Guyana. But it is a billion US that has been withdrawn from the nation’s Oil Fund in less than two years, and however counted; the citizens of this country should have some significant things to show for it, an abundance of such developments. Most of all, those had to be in their hands, in their pockets, in the new strength that allows them to navigate with dignity the challenges of cost-of-living in an inflationary environment.

The unfortunate reality is that many Guyanese are scratching their heads and asking themselves what happened to all that money, where did it all go. Families with school-age children received over US$100 per child last year, and US$200 in 2023. Guyana’s 15,000 plus pensioners collected close to an additional US$200 (GY$36,000) last year, with US$300 (GY$60,000) approved for all of 2023. There was subsidy for gas, water, and electricity, which gave poorer Guyanese a breather. Still, when taken together, these were only a fraction of the GY$200 billion that was withdrawn from the nation’s Oil Fund in New York.

In a time of plenty, this could be understood, in a society well-set in its different tiers, it could be rationalized, even excused. Before oil Guyana was a land of many poor, and with oil, it is still a dirt-poor place for too many in its population. Undoubtedly, there is more money coming in huge torrential downpours into this country, but there is also no doubt as to where such ends up, and into whose hands they make their way. It is the small brigade of the superrich and the regular rich, who capitalize and grow richer still. Those are the inner circles and closed cabals of citizens with the right political connections, who know the powerful people whose word is law for those favoured by them.

This is where the bulk of US$1 billion of Oil Fund money that belongs to every citizen of this country settles: in the hands of the men now known as mega contractors who are awarded megaprojects involving hundreds of millions of dollars in either American or Guyanese money. Mega contracts and mega projects possess the clever and creamy advantage of being the conduits for which massive corruptions occur, and almost at will. We are supposedly rich with oil money, but what is now undeniable is that only some in Guyana are enriched by the withdrawals from the precious Oil Fund. Last year, it was US$607 million and change, and when the fresh withdrawals from this year are added to that amount from 2022, the Oil Fund is now over US$1 billion less.

Who could be against more new and modern hospitals to help our sick and suffering? Certainly not us. Who could be against more and better schools, so that our children, the rich promise of the future into which so much must be invested? Certainly not us. We can be for all those works of urgently needed infrastructure, but only when Guyanese get the fullest value for their contract dollars. This becomes doubly important, when it is the poor in this country that are forced to make unwilling sacrifices, so that the machinery and velocity of infrastructure could happen at the rate that they do.

One billion American dollars (GY$200 billion) could have, should have, meant more for those Guyanese who still don’t know where the next full meal is going to come from, notwithstanding the range of relief measures and subsidy, as stunted as those were. Some infrastructure projects have to be done now, and the hungry and weak in our country catered for better, given more. It is revulsion that with so much money withdrawn and handled, so little went into the hands of those Guyanese who needed it the most.

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