H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Budget diplomacy

Jan 25, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – A kind citizen sent me the 2024 budget document, all 127 pages of it.  The Bible and independent media may have to take second chair for a day or two, to allow sifting through this magnum opus.  More officially, and more portentously, it is the Estimates of the Public Sector and the Budget for the Financial Year 2024.

Sounds like a construction coming straight out of Whitehall, but I digress.  What attracted my attention was the Introduction or preamble, as presented by Dr. Ashni K. Singh, MP.  I focus on the narrative, and leave the numbers alone today.  What was discernible was budgetary diplomacy at work, and high-level budgetary poetry.  Also unmistakable was the degree of budgetary sophistry.  An excerpt or two should confirm.

“…we are building a Guyana where every single Guyanese family will be in a position to meet their most basic needs relative to a minimum threshold required to enjoy a decent life.  I hasten to add that this threshold is not to be viewed through the narrow and simplistic monetary and fixed income lens….”  My hat is doffed to Dr. Singh, so now I am baldheaded, which prompts to the bald truth.  Due regard is given to the continuous (“we are building”), but I regret having to get in Ashni Singh’s face and tell him that many Guyanese (the word is half) cannot “meet their most basic needs” do not know of any “minimum threshold” for a “decent life.”

First, why is Dr. Singh reduced to the minimalism (“most basic needs”) in a country that is a tearaway economy, where the only fear now is of overheating?  Second, what trickery is this that he and his government pontificate about “minimum threshold” in the fastest growing economy in the world?  No sir!  Basic and minimum belong to the ancient economic era, or when Burnham had crowned himself king.  Third, Dr. Singh speaks about “decent life” which I would like to know how he defines such a condition.  The problem with these hollow self-serving platitudes is that Guyanese have men in airconditioned homes, airconditioned offices and airconditioned chariots telling people who travel in minibus furnaces and live in blackout grimness about what is good for them, how well they are doing, and all because of the benevolence of the PPP Government. But the killer condemnation in Dr. Singh’s pre numbers recital was that hymn about not viewing what he said about basic and threshold via “narrow and simplistic monetary and fixed income lens.”

Is this scholar serious?  He must be referring to the incessant cries for more pay for minimum wage workers, more remuneration for public servants, and more pittances for pensioners.  I must say that that is one clever budget presenter.  Okay, they are presented with all the roads in the world, with transportation cheaper, goods more available.  The question is what are they going to buy with, what can they access and afford?  In thinking of “simplistic monetary and fixed income lens” I inquire if Dr. Singh would prefer present value or future value, or would he delight in dealing in chits that never arrive, instead of more cash now?  To cut a fine point on this, people like him earn at least ten times that of minimum wage workers and public servants, with a prodigious number of allowances.

Those contribute to a much more superior quality of life that is alien to most Guyanese. But there he is telling Guyanese on the ropes that money is not all.  What is he working for, if not handsome money?  Why is he back here, if not to look out for himself?  People like Dr. Singh and his ilk have it so good that the only cost-of-living ravages they know are what they read in a textbook. The PPP top brass live in gilded towers with many expenses paid by the same besieged and battered taxpayers, and they have the unmitigated gall to advise the Guyanese people to ‘bear deh chafe.’  Or, to quote the illustrious and prescient Cheddi Jagan: “don’t worry, be happy.”

Dr. Singh continued with “multi-dimensional perspective” and “every single Guyanese should have access to: “decent housing” and “sufficient nutritious food to experience zero hunger…”  Well, Dr. Singh, in this country at this time, there are countless Guyanese who live with some degree of daily hunger.  Because they don’t have sufficient food, and the means to obtain such.  Nutritious food would be nice, but the first priority is in getting sufficient.  Nutritious fare is also more costly, and the dollars are only so few, and last so long.  Guyanese are hungry and hurting in droves, and this Disneyland star is ecstatically spouting about “multi-dimensional” versus “narrow simplistic monetary lens.’’  Once again, that old adage comes alive: the man whose bread is well-buttered has the luxury of telling his suffering neighbor that tomorrow will be better.

True to form, Dr. Singh trots out his polished list of goodies: housing, training, educating, and caring.  We will tell Guyanese what they need, whether they want it or not, as their foremost priorities.  Guyanese are wilting and fading daily, and this son of the soil (politeness) can preach about the secondary nature of “current comfort” against the primacy of “long term economic empowerment.”  How is it that the President, Vice President, and Dr. Singh himself do not emphasize that to donors and insiders, the less than one percent people in Guyana?  Tell them, Dr. Singh, that money is not everything, and their rewards will come later. Left out and left behind Guyanese are gasping for breath, and up comes Dr. Singh with his budget that has all the hallmarks befitting the work of economic stranglers.  For heavy-of-heart Guyanese, Dr, Singh’s 2024 budget is a strangler, a killer, and a lethal predator.  Thanks, Dr. Singh; but Guyanese could have been spared the budget sophistry and the budget beauty cream.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Cheddi Jagan, Dr Ashni K. Singh, Guyanese, MP, PPP Government

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