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High Income
Kaieteur News – It is the World Bank that assessed and reported that Guyana is now a ‘high-income’ country. This whole country should be jumping for joy in the streets, for it is the kind of news that confirms how Guyanese have it good. It is mostly due to the influx of prosperity driven by oil production, and all the other onshore activities that support what goes on offshore.
Unfortunately, the frightening reality that too many Guyanese live with is that, as pleasing as the World Bank’s numbers are, and the high places at where this once poor country now stands, they are still in the same state. That is, poor and without, struggling and fearful of what tomorrow will bring. It is usually not more or better, but less and what wounds some more.
The World Bank says that the national income per Guyanese is US$13,845. What a difference it would make for each citizen of this country to earn that kind of money in a year, to be able to face the trials and torments of a cruel and crippling cost of living environment with confidence, even a bit of swagger and pride in their stride. It would be justified because US$13,845 a year would make a world of difference to the Guyanese man, woman, and family who currently scratch around to eke out any meager kind of living.
Life is hard in Guyana, just have the interest to ask any Guyanese in the depressed areas, those without skills, any without a big job. How they are making it from one day to the next is a mystery. Just ask those parents, some of them in charge of small single parent homes, or those others with a large brood of young children, how they cope and there is a shrug that is a combination of the stoic and the bitter. God is in charge, change will come.
As much as the World Bank’s ‘high-income’ classification is a cause for pride, it withers away when it is meaningless to those who need to experience it the most. The harsh and painful reality is that life in Guyana has returned to the dismal and difficult seasons of old, when citizens in the lower economic tiers were forced to bind their waists and bear their chafe. What makes the daily encounters of today’s Guyanese dragging so unbearable, is that this country is so rich. How about the richest country in the world per citizen! This is the agonizing irony, where Guyanese are the envy of many other countries in the world, but if they only knew.
If they only knew of close to half of the local population that is forced to get by on US$5.50 a day. It is not a misprint that US$5.50 a day (another World Bank report), but this is the sharp contradiction for 48% of Guyanese. The per person income is US$13,845, or above, which pushes each Guyanese into the ‘high-income’ bracket, but look at how many have no alternative but see what they can do or get with merely existing on US$5.50 a day. Employing a 365-day assumption, (5.50×365), a considerable number of Guyanese are maxing out at just over US$2000 annually (US$2007). There is this huge gap between actually having in hand US$2000 a year, and the calculated US$13,845 a year by the World Bank. Wherever and to whomever that ‘high-income’ US$13,845 is going, it is not to the multitude of Guyanese.
Inflation concerns held in check, the tasty ‘high-income’ World Bank figure of US$13,845 as earnings per citizen would go a long way in helping locals to grappled successfully with the high cost of living that is so punishing to many. It is no secret who are the ones in the high-income bracket, and how spectacularly they are doing. It is not the poor and poverty stricken in Guyana, the left out, and the left behind. The rains of oil-related prosperity, the showers of ‘high-income’ richness, are not falling on every roof in Guyana. All the economic calculations, and the wonderful number that come from them, accurately reassure Guyanese how rich they are from how much they are earning. Just don’t tell that to poor, disappointed Guyanese.
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