Budget critics fail to put it into context
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Budget critics fail to put it into context
- Chandarpalby Sharon Lall
Guyana Chronicle
April 5, 2000
THOSE who claim this year's budget is "empty" are failing to put it into context, Presidential Advisor on Science and Environment, Mr Navin Chandarpal argues.
"In order to understand the budget, you need to recognise that it falls within a series of initiatives that have been undertaken by the government", he said Monday when debate on the measures opened in the National Assembly.
Responding to criticisms from the People's National Congress (PNC), he said the main opposition party was like the Essequibo River: "Wide at the mouth and shallow at the source."
He argued that the budget emphasises working together for an improved standard of living.
But Mr Sherwood Lowe of the PNC maintained that the budget presented last week by Minister with responsibility for Finance, Mr Saisnarine Kowlessar, showed only "low quality economic growth".
He said the three per cent economic growth rate the government boasts of was not achieved based on technology, an increase in productivity, labour force or skills utilisation.
"This growth is not due to any government policies, initiatives (or) any increase due to technology...This is sunshine growth. It is the work of God," Lowe contended to a chorus of approval from other PNC members.
He said merchandise imports declined by 8.5 per cent because of mainly a 16.7 per cent drop in imports of capital goods. Private investment also declined in 1999, according to him.
"No amount of jiggery-pokery figure can erase that simple basic understanding," he offered.
Lowe claimed that when the budget is compared with others it becomes evident that the government is in "self-denial" drifting "on a cloud somewhere".
"There are serious political problems in Guyana - social and economic - and yet the budget seems to be following a different flute...
"It is not in sync with the political, social and economic realities of this country," Lowe added.
He questioned the workings of the National Resource Management Project and bemoaned the "unholy marriage" between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the administration. He charged that it was this "unholy" alliance that produced the budget.
But Chanderpal declared that the IMF "wedding took place in 1978 and the bride was the PNC (when it was in government then)."
"It was that marriage that set this country on a path of destruction," he said, noting that Lowe's stance on the IMF was in contradiction with that of the leader of the PNC.
Chanderpal accused the Opposition of "blowing hot and cold" and said they speak, on one hand, about getting investors and, on the other, take actions and talk in a manner that chases investors away.
He said it was under the PNC stewardship that the IMF directives caused the real wages of public servants to slump with the devaluation of the dollar in 1987 and 1989.
Referring to doubts about the National Resource Management Project, Chanderpal said issues dealt with under this scheme include an increase in capacity not only for the Guyana Natural Resources Agency (GNRA) but others like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Guyana Forestry Commission, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, Lands and Surveys and the Hydromet Division.
Initiatives taken, he said, have led to the digitisation of maps for planning, decision-making and linking different types of activities.
Chanderpal said the government has set up a framework within which financial measures are put on par with the overall National Development Strategy (NDS).
Referring to the charge of "sunshine growth", he said the principles in the NDS require that the process of development be environmentally, physically and institutionally sustainable.
While fiscal measures can be put in place, the most serious incentive stems from the activities in the street, he said and referred to efforts by the Opposition to undermine stability and put Guyana in a direction that weakens investors' confidence.
