WPA on the mid-year report and the economy

Sep 13, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

The government has just released its mid-year report on the Guyanese economy. WPA believes that by any metric this publication by the Ministry of Finance has dominated the news cycle. Understandably, the scope, wealth and breadth of the information contained therein have provided a lot to engender an ongoing intense and robust national conversation on the economy.

Regrettably, it appears to WPA that the broad mass of Guyanese is being distracted and dis-informed by those who urge us to take a doomed, grim, hellish and dystopian view of where Guyana is at. Instead of articulating the obvious, which is, that new challenges are fast emerging in Guyana, they want us to believe that all is lost. Further, that our ancestral geologic formations offer no hope, only greater despair. WPA thinks that this is an absurdity!

WPA takes its political responsibility to contribute to the ongoing discussion seriously. We posit that, the post-colonial criminalized enterprise State of naked thievery and plunder, which ruled Guyana for the decade preceding the 2015 discovery of oil, is being morphed over the decade since the petroleum finds into a rentier State appropriating significant external rents from windfall oil earnings, in the billions of US dollars. This largesse is shared with the families, friends, and favorites of the ruling political elites as well as key functionaries of the State and related agencies. It defies the facts on the ground, therefore, to tell Guyanese, naively or otherwise, that there is no link between chosen Guyanese and increasing GDP and wealth.

The massive inequities in the country grow and the case for the Buxton Proposal, the WPA’s cash transfer plan, gets stronger. In all WPA’s interactions with the media on recent published Mid-year Reports of the Ministry of Finance, we have always singled out for mention, the sheer wealth of details and data on the economy, its policies and performance provided for the period which is reported. This recent report is no different. Paradoxically, this strength underscores crippling weaknesses in these official data.

To begin with the data and details in these reports are needed in a far more timely, real-time manner, so that they can be acted upon when it most matters. Under current regulations, the report is required to be published within 60 days after the mid-year. The late publication incentivizes the lack of interest in timeliness. It also incentivizes wordiness to fill the time allotted for the report, which is 111 pages long. Last, and by no means least, WPA is convinced that more analysis and less descriptive detail along with greater timeliness in publishing most of the details and data in the Report would serve the nation better.

Sincerely,

Working People’s Alliance

conversation, economy, Guyanese, information, Working Peoples’ Alliance

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WPA on the mid-year report and the economy

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