Putting people first

Jan 29, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – “Putting People First” is the theme of this year’s $1.558T budget presented by Dr. Ashni Singh, the Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance. It is another record budget, following the expected pattern of recent years.

The spending plan for 2026 continues the trend of past budgets, with unsurprising heavy allocations for roads and bridges. The set asides for the ‘people who are put first’, on the other hand, are so meager as to prompt disbelief and pain, not unexpected, either. When slogans are involved, the PPPC Government is among the best, but that’s all, and this budget is no different. Glittering numbers, but dullness for the owners of wealth that generates much excitement, Guyanese citizens.

In situations where “Putting People First” is the genuine article, ordinary Guyanese, the ones questioning their lot, their circumstances that force them to live as they do, wouldn’t have much to complain about. They would be celebrating, because their government spent much time thinking of them, and made provisions for them. Provisions in the budget that speak for themselves in numbers that mean something to hopeful people long denied of their proper share of their oil patrimony. So, they joyfully take their place as citizens in an oil producing country.

Citizens that have been well taken care of, not so that they live in the lap of luxury, but that they can take care of their needs, and still have something leftover to bank or invest. They must partake and enjoy a fair slice of the national pie, the kind that the haves in Guyana, the connected less than 1% subset of Guyanese receive in continuing streams, and take as their due. The 2026 budget identifies $60B for a cash grant of $100,000 for every Guyanese over 18 years old, and it is a certainty that the government and its propagandists will make a huge production out of this. Conveniently, they forget or ignore that that same $100,000 cash grant was promised for 2025, and should have been paid last year. It is an IOU, and a carryover of a past promise made by none other than the president himself, only for him to dance around his promise, and now deliver belatedly.

Citizens, many of them stuck in single income territory, are forced to contend with, and swallow, what amounts to insignificant charity from their cash rich government. An increase of $5,000 monthly for approximately 76,000 senior citizens. This is all that the government can put out, all of US$25 more monthly, not even US$1 a day more for elderly Guyanese who struggle desperately to keep up with soaring prices. We would like to ask Dr. Ashni Singh, the man with the magical numbers, this question: how is that, how can that ever be about, “Putting People First?” The same could be asked of Minister Singh in relation to the $10,000 Because We Care” increase to the parents of 206,000 school children. What does $10,000 more a year buy for growing children and their growing needs where prices are growing at astronomical rates? We acknowledge the new $20,000 transportation cash for children, but the numbers confirm what cannot be denied.

In record budget after record budget, the PPPC Government has made it a practice to chisel and shave to the skin Guyanese who need to see the substantial coming from their budgets to them. What they actually experienced in past years, with the same repeated this year, is a $5,000 bump here, and a $10,000 jump there, and as quickly as that is devoured by cutthroat prices, that is the end of the government’s generosity. Guyanese on the wrong side of the local economic scale shouldn’t be reduced to hoping and begging for consideration from their record budgets, in a country that is the economic success story of the world. The lowliest citizen in Guyana is owed, is entitled to the same standard and consideration as the highest, with the president, ministers, and the lavishly cared-for contractor class included. Hundreds of billions are provided for more building and the building up of different sectors. A few billions here and there for people sum up the dross behind the 2026 budget gloss.

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Ashni Singh, budget, Editorial, Putting People First

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