Heralding the new economy
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
February 28, 2004
THE Ministry of Finance has begun consultations with a number of major stakeholders ahead of the final drafting of the nation's 2004 budget.
The consultations are a tradition.
But beyond traditional sector interest lobbying, how much of what each stakeholder group is seeking from those consultations focuses on the evolution of technology as the new driving force of the nation's economy?
In a May 1993 edition of SPAN, Dan Moskowitz began an article, 'What's New In Business Schools?' with a quote by Calvin Coolidge, the 30th U.S. President: "The business of America is business." President Coolidge was delivering a speech to newspaper editors in 1925, but business became the business of American education ever since and the United States has emerged as the world's leading industrial nation.
Technological advancement should be the business of Guyana from here on.
For sure, Guyanese aren't oblivious to the essence of technological advancement in Guyana's development. We were indoctrinated on the virtues of technological evolution ever since the Burnham administration began promoting the Mazaruni Hydropower Project as the precursor of an aluminum smelter, a sugar refinery and the dawn of high-tech natural resource harvesting. And we've seen countries in the Caribbean just across from us move ahead using technology as the engine of industrial growth.
Besides, private schools and international correspondence institutes are graduating Guyanese students putting great concentration on business studies and technology know-how.
The government's 2004 budget is expected to focus on poverty reduction. That's commendable. But we hope that the strategy being devised to reduce poverty will include initiatives to transform the technology on which we depend to propel economic growth.
Government is very conscious of the importance of technological innovation. Yet, it may once again yield to the pleas or diabolic maneuverings of some representative organizations to procrastinate on the reform of the public service, the computerization of state agencies, and increase spending on the acquisition of new technology for infrastructure building etc.
These organizations appear to be concerned more about the retention of otherwise redundant workers than about the reorientation or retaining of peripherally educated workers in skills that an emerging Guyana needs to leap the centuries.
Trade unions, for instance, must see the trimming of bloated bureaucracies and the recruitment of graduates with high-tech skills as desirable. And groups such as CAGI and the Guyana Manufacturers' Association must make clear in their consultations with the Ministry of Finance, how investments in technology generate new knowledge, create job opportunities, build new industries, ensure sustained economic and national security, improve our quality of life, and drive economic growth.
The Ministry of Education should be allocated money to devise and implement a curriculum that requires schools to teach high-tech education courses, and a key element of Government's strategy this year should be the spurring of public and private investments in technology and industry-led technology partnerships.
The University of Guyana, NARI and the Institute of Applied Science and Technology, to name a few, should also be allocated research-and- development money as vital investments in science and technology.
It means, too, that Guyana Power and Light Incorporated will have to invest more and move more quickly to increase its power generating capacity, and the Office of the Prime Minister will have to be given more money to facilitate the accelerated establishment of hydroelectric plants in the country.
All in all, a shift toward higher technology must reflect part of our core national values. It's a must for our heralding of the new economy that we've promised ourselves this 21st century.