A vision, not just a budget, damnation too  

Feb 17, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – The Hon. Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Mme. Gail Teixeira, said that the PPP Govt’s 2026 financial blueprint is not just a budget.  I agree with her.  Because it certainly doesn’t have quality; especially one that fails to meet the needs of all Guyanese.  Needs not wishes, and all Guyanese, not only bigshots.  Mme. Teixeira advanced the bold position that the 2026 budget is a vision.

Indeed, it may be so, but with this question: vision for whom?  Guyana’s insider of insiders, the Private Sector, was afforded access to budget deliberations, probably demanded that its inputs be included in this year’s budget.  There is a vision for a set of Guyanese, who function as the commercial extension of Freedom House, and influential consultants to Dr. AK Singh’s budget office.  If there’s a vision in the 2026 budget, the private sector is its priority, sits smugly at its apex, its core.

For some insights for this enduring PPP icon, I curtsy to the billions in roads and bridges built.  There is $200 billion more budgeted this year for those two infrastructural mainstays.  But of what benefit are they to the 50 percent or more Guyanese who don’t have money to hail a minibus to take them to the terrors of the marketplace?  Of what good cheer is that $100 billion in excise taxes on gasoline and similar products absorbed by the government, when anxious pensioners or distressed homemakers cannot afford a roundtrip bus fare?  Minister Teixeira is proud of her government’s vision.  I wonder if her pride stretches over to hundreds of thousands of Guyanese, who are cast out from all these grand economic developments, these inspiring budget provisions.

I take a chance; beg indulgence for distancing from compassion momentarily.  When 10,000 Guyanese are shorthanded and without to live at the most minimal of standards, that number may be so insignificant in the bigger picture, as to be negligible.  But what can be said, when it is not 10,000, but more than 100,000 citizens.  And not the relative flatness of that close-to-10 percent of Guyana’s population, but the uphill clawing of hundreds of thousands of Guyanese, who have the greatest difficulty making it daily in this oil rich El Dorado.

With the Oil Fund (NRF) attacked enthusiastically, drained of its billions yearly, ordinary Guyanese should have benefitted more, be able to receive financing that helps them manage their lives less stressfully, less painfully.  Where’s the money for the poor?  Where is the vision in those budget programmes with all those glittering numbers, yet are such pittances for financially afflicted, beaten down Guyanese?  I insist that when Guyanese are forced to survive, by whatever means, that’s not a budget with a vision.  It is less of a vision and more of a condemnation to the kind of life that rank-and-file Guyanese have no choice but to live.  When so many billions of US dollars are borrowed, with more billions in loans planned, no Guyanese should be living a hand-to-mouth, existence.  It doesn’t even qualify as a paycheck-to-paycheck condition at the level of those on the lower end of the national economic ladder.

I assert so, because the weekly paycheck and the monthly senior citizen pension check do not have enough dollars to take recipients to the middle of next week or next month, if so far.  Guyanese are like people with fancy buildings, but nothing in their kitchens.

A true vision, a vision that is for those in dire need, would be of fewer tens of billions for public infrastructure works, and a few more of those same billions for Guyanese who somehow make it through the day by the seat of their pants.  A budget balanced with the numbers spread in that thoughtful, considerate manner would be a vision.  When Guyanese are hungry and perpetually cash-strapped so that the basics of living are a torture, then that is not a vision, but the entrail of a self-serving propaganda production, Mme. Teixeira.  This is more than a point of disagreement; I hasten to assure this cagey political veteran of Guyana’s trench wars.  It is a statement of fact on the punishing and poignant realities of how the poor are damned to live in Guyana.  US billions borrowed, US billions withdrawn from the people’s savings, their Oil Fund, and they hang by a thread.  More PPP infernal budget damnations; a vision that’s upside-down.

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

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• budget, Gail Teixeira, GHK Lall, vision

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