Understanding Guyana's Coloured Economies

Understanding Guyana’s Coloured Economies

Dec 13, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Dr. Randy Persaud (Nov 26) introduced the concept of ‘Orange Economy’ and followed up with comments from other distinguished writers Hemdutt Kumar, Dr. Walter Persaud, and Dr. Tarron Khemraj. Randy is right that most people, including me, never heard of the Orange Economy (as defined by Randy as creative work, intellect, the arts, etc.). I do not know if President Irfaan used the term ‘Orange Economy’ in his outreach committing to development to Region 6. I don’t think the people are that sophisticated about these economic concepts as they are focused on basic bread and butter issues. (As an aside, the area needs more than Orange Economy to raise standard of living; it needs infrastructural development and real industries as wisely proposed by the President). Learning something new is always good and transforming parts of the Corentyne into tourist hubs (OE) is welcomed. How do we get people to monetize their intellect or creativity?

During my doctoral studies of economics in the 1980s, Orange Economy was not in any books or literature and not part of the vocabulary of economists. I am sure it would have been the same for Prof. Tarron Khemraj who studied economics at the New School (NY) in the 1990s. It was also not in text books when I taught economics for over two decades, the last time over a decade ago. It is still not in vogue today when I checked economics books. There were other “colored economies” (mentioned below) but not ‘Orange’ and these other ‘colored economies’ were mandated concepts to be taught, to be learned, and to be examined by Professors or educators. Since I stopped teaching economics, a number of other colored economies have cropped up like ‘purple economy’, ‘blue economy’, etc. It is not that the contents of the colored economies were not taught in economics. They were basics of economics taught in classrooms, but they were not so termed until the last decade or so long after I exited the classroom.

Although they did not write on colored economies, I take the opportunity to salute Sukrishnalall Pasha, Martin Pertab, Tarron Khemraj, Ramesh Gampat, and Thomas Singh, leaving out some of the retired ones like Clive Thomas and Maurice Odle, etc. for their contributions to Guyana’s development. They are some of Guyana’s finest, most brilliant economists. Mr. Pasha (an outstanding statistician and math wizard) and Dr. Pertab (outstanding analyst) are still contributing significantly in public service.

What is Colored Economies? Economists have recently started using different colors to describe aspects of a country’s economy. It is simply a framework that categorizes economic activities in a distinct domain, assigning it a color. For example, blue (having to do with marine or the ocean or water or fishing), orange (creativity, music, tourism, etc.), green (environment), pink (non-hetero-sexual), purple (women empowerment), brown (fossil fuel), grey (legitimate businesses avoiding taxes), among others. So colored economies, and there are about a dozen, are recently used to categorizes economic activities. They are used to help the public as well as students better understand economics and how each category contribute to national output.

Prior to the emergence of the ‘colored economies’, some economic colors were (and still are) used in the course of study of economics. There was the red economy (communism or centralized planning), black (underground), green revolution (agricultural revolution using science and modern technology) but green today refers to the environment (our LCDS).

As best as I know, students of economics are not tested on these colored concepts, and they are not sub-fields of economics. The discipline of economics is still taught the traditional way of sub-divisions in macro, micro, labor, econometrics or statistics, development, social, political, health, environment, management, international business, etc. Comprehensive exams for the MA and PhD are still in the in the above sub-fields.

Dr Randy is commended for introducing the concept of Orange Economy. The introduction of new (color) concepts to categorize economic activities is welcomed. Support for and implementation of ideas to monetize talent and tourism (new to the Corentyne) in uplifting lives is what matters most.

Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram

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