Diaspora stepping up, PPPC Government falling down

Dec 24, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese are scattered all over the world, with great concentrations in New York, Toronto, Atlanta, and Florida, among other big, thriving immigrant cities. Many of them remember where they came from, especially those who left their relatives behind, and the tough economic conditions that are the norm there.

The roots can be so strong that even as they themselves are struggling to get off the ground financially, they still have the heart to send ‘a little something’ to make life easier for those close to them. In a recently released report from the World Bank, members in the Guyanese diaspora have been sending upwards of a half billion US dollars back home (here) every year for the last three years. This is notwithstanding the arrival of oil in Guyana, and Guyana pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of the precious commodity daily. Currently, oil has stayed around the US$80 a barrel mark, other than for a few blips, for most of this year. Yet the Guyanese diaspora felt that they had no choice but to share some love because their own are facing severe daily hardships, and fighting an uphill battle with cost-of-living.

In 2021 and 2022, the diaspora remitted US$548 million each year to Guyana, which was edged by the US$549 million sent back here in 2023. The Guyanese diaspora is due a word of thanks for not forgetting, for caring, and for doing so in a tangible manner. We wish that the same could be said of the PPPC Government, which has so many millions of US dollars, which convert to billions of Guyana dollars, in its hands, thanks to the returns from oil, and that of other natural resources. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, the Guyanese diaspora has remitted more to Guyana in 2021, 2022, and 2023 than the Government of Guyana approved for the people of Guyana in that same period. Using the US$548-49 million in each of those three years, and it is over a hundred billion Guyana dollars yearly.

An aggregation of cash grants, pay raises, disability and old age pension increases from the PPPC Government to the people of Guyana does not come anywhere near to GY$100 billion sent back by overseas-based Guyanese. If we are to be generous and include the assistance that some call subsidies (water and gasoline, as examples), and what others see as shadow accounting, the remittances from the diaspora are still ahead of what the government has extended to struggling Guyanese in different sectors of the economy.

The Guyanese in the diaspora were not elected to office, and are not responsible for governing anything and anyone. The fact that cannot neither be argued nor denied is that they have been more thoughtful and more deeply compassionate than those who have total power over the purse strings here. To expand on an earlier assertion, quite a few Guyanese felt some heavy blows during the COVID-19 viral epidemic that hit their new places of residence hard. But they still found it in them to spare a few dollars for their struggling relations back home. Also, not many Guyanese have middle management, or high-paying, white-collar jobs, but they were able to be moved by the consideration to put some dollars together and send them here. They have their own families and their expenses in what was a tough inflationary environment, but the remittances of a hundred or two hundred US dollars kept coming. This was what has aggregated to US$549 million in each of the last three years, and which is what has put the efforts of the government to shame.

If there is one thing about which the government cannot cry about shortage, it is money. Two recent national budgets have been record breakers. Loans are available for Guyana from everywhere and everyone, and the PPPC Government has gone on a borrowing binge from left, right, and center. Some GY$200 billion has been taken out of the Natural Resources Fund, and Guyanese are still depending on their relatives in the diaspora to remit a couple of dollars back to them, so as to help with their unending fight for survival. The diaspora has stepped up, the PPPC Government cannot go on falling down.

Atlanta, Editorial, New York, PPPC, Toronto

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Diaspora stepping up, PPPC Government falling down

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