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A budget that disappoints and insults

Jan 19, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial…

 Kaieteur News- If the PPP/C Government is sitting back and waiting for kudos on its 2025 budget, it is in a for a long wait.  The rank-and-file in Guyana’s population was expecting something tangible through thoughtful budget provisions.  What they got, instead, was a budget that disappoints, then insults.  Billions are thrown about willy-nilly, and there is still difficulty in figuring out the coherency in this year’s budget.  What could be said about an overall policy to give Guyanese reeling from cost-of-living pressures significant relief?

The government keeps emphasizing how much it is spending for fuel relief, with this year’s number being $80B. Yet regular commuters are held hostage by the fare flexibility of operators in the public transportation system.  This $80B in fuel subsidy that is going to be made much ado about vanishes when darkness steps in, or the crowds thicken, as the recent holiday season confirmed.  For those many commuters dependent on public transportation, the fuel subsidy is more of theory given the reality of having to dig deeper into their thinly-lined pockets.

In the agricultural sector, $1B in VAT is to be removed, and over $73B is for Drainage and Irrigation.  The numbers are impressive, but there is the depressing condition of farm products staying high, or racing away from regular citizens.  The road and bridge sector continues to be fed money at an astronomical rate, with $209.3B in the budget.  In the three most recent budgets, over a half trillion dollars have been for roads and bridges, but traffic congestion is still a daily headache.  Further, the network of new or extended roads has done little to bring about the expected changes in the prices of farm products.  In view of the billions borrowed, billions withdrawn from the Natural Resources Fund, and the billions in taxpayer dollars absorbed, the question is how much value for money are Guyanese getting.  We would say that it is minimal, at best.

Again, the education sector benefits from a huge chunk of the budget – $175B to be exact – and the government claps itself on the back by talking of a world-class education system.  The whole Cabinet in the PPP/C Government may have fooled itself, but Guyanese know better.  Take away the cream of the crop, the CSEC and CAPE high performers, and thereafter the troubles and concerns multiply.  This public school system is of such a world-class standard that PPP/C Government ministers and its senior public servants settle for the confidence-inducing private school system for their children to attend.  So, who is fooling whom with this empty talk about a “world-class” education system?

In Dr. Ashni Singh’s budget presentation that lasted five hours and five minutes, he spoke of many things, but couldn’t find a minute to share a sentence about minimum wage workers toiling for $60,147 monthly and dying by inches from that horror.  This confirms one of two things: the PPP/C Government is so deep in bed with the private sector that it turns a blind eye to the plight of Guyana’s minimum wage workers.  Or, it solidifies the belief that the private sector has a stranglehold on the government that minimum wage workers are sacrificed to the exploitations of their employers.  Either way, this country’s minimum wage workers are caught in an economic vice that forces them to live by their wits and the seat of their pants.

Relative to cost-of-living eases, the direct contributions to money in hand involve an increase in the income tax threshold ($30,000), a decrease in the tax rate by a meagre 3% from 28% to 25%, and tax relief per child per parent of $10,000.  Cumulatively, these three measures put some additional dollars in Guyanese hands, but it is negligible when spiralling prices for basic items transform the lives of poor citizens into a waking nightmare.  Pensions for the elderly and NIS recipients, those who are largely dependent on these incomes, are sure to leave Guyanese more angry than happy, so disappointing they are.  The prospects are not encouraging for Guyanese: there is so much money in the economy from oil and loans, and still they are all but ignored and treated most insultingly in the trickle of budget provisions for them.

(A budget that disappoints and insults)

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