The Working People’s Alliance (WPA), in a statement, is making clear it is not impressed with the mid-year report on Guyana’s economy. Last month the governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) gleefully touted the economy (Gross Domestic Product) has grown 49.7 percent for the first half of 2024. In the midst of this growth half the Guyana’s population is poor, living on less than US$5.50 (GY$1200.00) per day.
The contrast is also made of the direct beneficiaries of the growth. According to the party “the largesse is shared with the families, friends, and favourites of the ruling political elites as well as key functionaries of the State and related agencies.”
In a blistering critique of the report the WPA notes the growth defies the facts on the ground. The party points to the massive inequities in the country’s growth, restating that the case for the Buxton Proposal, the WPA’s cash transfer plan, gets stronger. In 2018 the WPA proposed a cash grant pay-out of GY$1 million (US$5000) to every household from the oil revenue, branded the ‘Buxton Proposal.’
Underscoring the cash grant proposal is the belief of Professor Emeritus Clive Thomas, an economist and the architect of the proposal, that the oil revenue provided the opportunity to break free from poverty and underdevelopment that have plagued post independent Guyana.
This year Guyana is expected to haul in at least US$2.8 billion revenue from oil and gas sales.
The Party also points out that the strength of the economy is underscored by crippling weaknesses in official data. To this end the WPA says a better grasp of the economy requires more analysis and less descriptive detail, along with greater timeliness in publishing most of the details and data in the Report.
The full statement follows
WPA Press Statement
The government has just released its mid-year report on the Guyanese economy. WPA believes that by any metric this publication by the Ministry of Finance has dominated the news cycle. Understandably, the scope, wealth and breadth of the information contained therein has provided a lot to engender an ongoing intense and robust national conversation on the economy.
Regrettably, it appears to WPA that the broad mass of Guyanese is being distracted and dis-informed by those who urge us to take a doomed, grim, hellish and dystopian view of where Guyana is at. Instead of articulating the obvious, which is, that new challenges are fast emerging in Guyana, they want us to believe that all is lost. Further, that our ancestral geologic formations offer no hope, only greater despair. WPA thinks that this is an absurdity!
WPA takes its political responsibility to contribute to the ongoing discussion seriously We posit that, the post-colonial criminalized enterprise State of naked thievery and plunder, which ruled Guyana for the decade preceding the 2015 discovery of oil, is being morphed over the decade since the petroleum finds into a rentier State appropriating significant external rents from windfall oil earnings, in the billions of US dollars. This largesse is shared with the families, friends, and favorites of the ruling political elites as well as key functionaries of the State and related agencies It defies the facts on the ground, therefore, to tell Guyanese, naively or otherwise, that there is no link between chosen Guyanese and increasing GDP and wealth.
The massive inequities in the country grow and the case for the Buxton Proposal, the WPA’s cash transfer plan, gets stronger. In all WPA’s interactions with the media on recent published Mid-year Reports of the Ministry of Finance, we have always singled out for mention, the sheer wealth of details and data on the economy, its policies and performance provided for the period which is reported. This recent report is no different. Paradoxically, this strength underscores crippling weaknesses in these official data.
To begin with the data and details in these reports are needed in a far more timely, real time manner, so that they can be acted upon when it most matters. Under current regulations the report is required to be published within 60 days after the mid-year. The late publication incentivizes the lack of interest in timeliness. It also incentivizes wordiness to fill the time allotted for the report, which is 111 pages long. Last, and by no means least, WPA is convinced that more analysis and less descriptive detail along with greater timeliness in publishing most of the details and data in the Report would serve the nation better.
