Budget 2025 is out. It is another trillion-dollar budget. Last year this amount of money was not enough for the government to pursue its plans. It kept going back to the National Assembly for supplementary votes. By the end of the year there still was not enough money to payout the cash grant promised by the government. Some people have received theirs ahead of pensioners who were identified to be among the first. Many pensioners are still to receive this cash grant. The Finance Ministry claims to have the cheques printed as has been the case for weeks. People are now being asked to await the announcement of the distribution centres.
An official has said that the distribution centres would be made known probably within a month. People are not encouraged to go to the Finance Ministry which would seem to be a wise decision if the confusion is to be avoided. Will there be a phone call? No one knows. Under the conditions, the Minister with responsibility for Finance within the Office of the President has already announced that the cash grant roll out has been successful.
Toward the end of last year there was simply no money in the system to make the payments. People began to ask where did the money go. Guyana did not have the capability to use a lot of the money. There were not enough people. Contractors could not find labour. In fact, the government gave so many contracts to one company. This was bound to ensure that many projects were not completed.
As was expected, sums were voted for projects that never got started. Those that got underway were never completed. To crown it all, the government has not made any move to recover any of the money. This was the attitude that caused Leader of the Alliance For Change Nigel Hughes to conclude that the contracts are just a way of cash transfers.
Most of the contractors are family, friends and favourites of the government. Some allege that people in the government enjoy a portion of the contract sum by way of kickbacks. So the government people are enhancing their wealth through the award of contracts. But not every member, friend or supporter is a contractor. Some are ordinary citizens. These are not ignored. They get a share of the wealth by way of cash grants. One government agency or the other goes to the communities to distribute hampers.
The hampers look innocuous but inside these hampers are envelopes containing sums of money. It never escapes notice that such distributions are done in communities perceived to be strongholds of the ruling party. In one case a non-supporter enjoyed the bonanza because a friend and neighbour collected a hamper for her. Imagine her surprise when she saw the envelope with $200,000. Such distributions are more common than is widely known. That was why there was no money at the end of the year.
The programme smacks of ethnic discrimination for obvious reasons. And this is because the government wants to keep its support base happy. It will keep doing this because if it stops these supporters would become angry and withhold the vote.
In one case the government allocated $7 billion in mobilisation fee to a contractor who already had a huge contract. The second project was for the construction of a 12-storey office complex at Eccles. The first sums were contained in the 2023 budget.
By the end of last year despite promises from Juan Edghill, all that remained on the site were some piles. Had I been the contractor I would have banked the money since there is no pressure to complete projects. I would have secured interest over the two years. I would still have had the contract mobilisation fee to undertake the work.
And while people are complaining about the absence of money to get the National Insurance Scheme out of deficit, the Guyana Sugar Corporation continues to be a black hole. It is gobbling up money from the treasury, money that could have been used to take people out of poverty.
Over the past four years Guysuco has got some $120 billion. For 2025 It has got another $13 billion. The sad part is that the more money the sugar company gets the less sugar it produces. Last year sugar production was some 47,000 tonnes. The biggest joke has to be that the sugar company will double production this year.
Never in its history has Guysuco ever doubled its production in a year. What is known is that the labour force is declining. Who would want to cut cane these days? The government reported that the sugar company is about 40 per cent mechanised. This means that there should be fewer sugar workers. And there are.
Indeed, the labour force has been declining for years. When the coalition downsized the industry, the PPP, then in opposition, said that 7,000 sugar workers were put on the breadline. The actual figure was four thousand, the size of the work force, but a critic always inflates the figures. The PPP never corrected the misrepresentation.
There are fewer than 4,000 in the fields today. These workers know that the life of a cane cutter in the fields is short. There are few who lasted a decade. There is no pension like the public servant.
None wants his children to venture into the cane fields. But these people love their cricket. With the oil money the government should concentrate on developing the various playfields that abound in the sugar belt. It would still get the workers’ support.
No one knows where the government is going. It is still to reopen one sugar factory. It has been four years but nothing is being said about the reopening of any sugar estate. That was a promise. But the government is not known to honour promises. The cash grant is just one case.
