By GHK Lall- Inflation is like obeah. Most have some idea of what it represents, but almost everyone frikken fuh taak about it. So, they argue nervously. So, they whisper tentatively. There’s inflation from officials. Then, there’s inflation from ordinary folks.
The Bank of Guyana said that inflation is a sustained increase in prices over a length of time. It’s right. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing that Guyana’s Central Bank got right. From its employment of practices from the Jagdeo School of Economics, Guyanese absorb the unbelievable: inflation in the low to mid-single-digits. Whatever the experts at the Central Bank are smoking, one thing is certain. They are not buying. Not eating. Not building. In short, the experts in government ivory tower offices are hallucinating. Please note thoughtfulness: nothing about fudging the numbers.
Check the numbers: inflation in 2025 at 3.6% and food prices rising by 6.6%. There it is: confirmation of too much hitting the bottle in government quarters. Have the guys totting up their numbers ever heard about the market, the supermarket? Pick a basket, any basket, of food items. The challenge is on. Nothing is going down. Worse yet, nothing is going up by less than 50%, often as much as 100%, week after week.
For the Bank of Guyana and the Bureau of Stats, when was the last time a bundle of bora (or bhagee) started out in Week A at one level, and stayed within a 25% increase range (being generous) in Week B? Pick ayuh basket of goods. Then, measure the change in prices. Pick what suits: week-to-week, quarter-to-quarter, year-over-year. The change in prices is not in the single-digits.
I use Excellency Ali, Guyana’s world-class president, as my expert. Did not the master himself speak of more markets? Who railed against middlemen jacking up farm products prices by 10? Not markups of 2 or 3, but 10. Mr. Ali said so, and what the boss says goes. So, I must ask Dr. Errol de la Cruz, a remarkable Guyanese, if the markup is by 10, then how the hell (sorry) the f—–g (sorry again) inflation levels can be at those presented, whether by BoG or BoS? For emphasis, I bring together official numbers and the president’s own words. I insist that the official inflation stats are in error, or deliberately rearranged.
Reality check again: supermarket, mini market, nothing stays still. Basics cost more than last week, or last month. Fuget bout last year, or the inflation basket battam drap out. Creole is put out to inspire Dr. de la Cruz. To the experts with their tables, charts, graphs, and footnotes, have this Xmas card: Cut the crap. Guyanese who didn’t get past kindergarten know that those inflation numbers are dead wrong.
They pay the prices; they feel the pain. That is, when they can afford to do so; and those who are not so numbed that they still feel the piercings. The PPP Govt knows it. Guyanese poor know it. Most of all, Pres Ali knows that the charades and masquerades with inflation numbers don’t holdup. Please refer to middlemen and their 10 times markup, against which the president raged. Or pretended, since he is such a practiced actor.
My concerns focus on food, for its life. Go from food. Try construction, transportation, rent condition, and it’s the same. Prices spiral. They don’t linger, slow walk, or trot. They gallop. Nothing goes up by GY$10 or $20. Not even a loaf of bread. There can be no one at the BoG, or the Stats Bureau, whose head is so hard, whose mind is so dense, that they don’t grasp this. When the prices of major basics (rice, oil, and the rest) climb, then official statistical averages must be the Guyanese version of jumbie figures. All smoke, spirit, and a rich imagination.
Frankly, officials who construct these statistical gimmicks should be promoted to solitary confinement. There they can let their predilections for fabrications and exaggerations multiply. Last, official inflation numbers are so laughable, such a con, that two dreaded words enter the national conversation: price controls. It’s inflation, stupid.
