Stark contrast between Ashni Singh’s and Jordan’s “biggest budget ever”

Dear Editor,
Finance Ministers in Guyana and in many countries around the world usually boast about their “biggest budget ever”. Every Finance Minister has done so since independence. And in every parliamentary budget debate, the Opposition would counter that “biggest budget ever” means nothing unless it delivers for the people.
It therefore is not shocking that the major criticism the immediate former Minister of Finance could come up with is that Ashni Singh’s “biggest budget ever” is much ado about nothing and is a “disaster”.
The truth is that Minister Singh and the PPP MPs, in the coming debate, would find it easy to defend Budget 2025 as the “biggest budget ever” because Budget 2025 is transformative: empowering people, families, businesses; building the infrastructure; transforming horizons; creating jobs; providing safety nets for the vulnerable; building the social sectors such as health, education, housing, water and sports, etc. The “biggest budget ever” supports the most ambitious strategy for development and GDP diversification ever.
The PPP MPs would have a field day in slamming the same claims Winston Jordan made as Finance Minister, because Jordon’s claim of the “biggest budget ever” then were truly meaningless.
There are many reasons why the PNC-led APNU/AFC administration lost the 2020 elections. None of those reasons stand out as clearly as their clueless Minister of Finance. One would have thought it is in his interest not to remind people of why he stands out as Guyana’s and CARICOM’s worst ever Finance Minister.
Jordan presented five national budgets; each time, he made the “biggest budget ever” claim. I believe Ashni Singh has presented 13 budgets, and each time he has made that claim. There are stark differences between the boast of “biggest ever” budgets made by Ashni Singh and Jordan. In the five budgets Jordan presented, one could easily argue that “biggest” did not mean better, because each of those budgets placed more burden on Guyanese through increased taxation; each took away benefits or caused loss of jobs, and none included a transformative agenda either in infrastructure or the social development needs of our people. All of the budgets Jordan presented were “tax and spend” budgets, and all were utter disavowal of promises his government made to people.
Minister Ashni Singh’s “biggest budget ever” in 2025 is, as before, not merely a routine boast. First, Ashni Singh’s “biggest budget ever” is a budget in which the Government is able to allocate more money for development without any new taxes, and with a reduction of taxes. The threshold has been increased by more than 30% between Budgets 2024 and 2025, and by 100% between Budgets 2020 and 2025. The tax rate has been reduced from 28% to 25% for salaries up to $260,000 above the threshold, and from 40% to 35% for incomes above the threshold +$260,000. In addition, VAT on certain items, such as agriculture machinery and for generators, have been waived.
In contrast, Jordan’s budgets were filled with more than 200 new taxes, or increased taxes, such as VAT on education, water, electricity, health products, food, drainage and irrigation fees, agriculture land lease rates, mining and agriculture machinery, etc.
While the PPP budgets since 2020 have averaged a more-than-20% annual increase in the threshold, Jordan’s budget managed a moribund 6% annual increase. In short, PPP/C budgets provided tax relief for people and businesses; Jordan’s PNC-led APNU/AFC budgets imposed severe tax burdens on people.
Second, Ashni Singh’s“biggest budget ever” significantly increases safety nets, such as the Because We Care school grant, one-off cash grants for all adults, introduction of a cash grant for newborn babies, and a national health voucher for all citizens; increases in old-age pension and public assistance. Budget 2025 caters for cost-of-living interventions like removal of bridge tolls, transforming UG to free education, increase in the number of persons on part-time employment, allocation to ensure electricity cost will be reduced by 50%, etc.
Jordan’s “biggest budget ever” took away safety nets from people. They abolished the Because We Care grants; the water and electricity subsidies; support for farmers, businesses and households during climate change and other kinds of disasters. They increased UG fees.
Third, Ashni Singh’s “biggest budget ever” results from investments in transformative infrastructuresuch as highways and bridges, gas-to-energy project, schools and hospitals, sports facilities, etc. Jordan made the boast of “biggest budget ever” five times, but for all five of those budgets, there was no allocation for new transformative projects. All the big transformative projects were those that were in progress from 2014, such as the Modernization and Expansion of the CJIA, the East Coast Demerara, East Bank Demerara, West Demerara Highways. No new school or hospital or genuine housing scheme was completed during this time. Their most note-worthy project was Durban Park, which stands out today in the physical landscape as a national eyesore and disgrace, and as one of the biggest scams and corruption transactions ever.
The most important distinguishing feature between Ashni Singh’s and Jordan’s “biggest ever budget” boasts relates to how these budgets treat manifesto and campaign promises. Ashni Singh and the PPP MPs will justifiably regale the nation and the world that their “biggest budget ever” supports implementation of promises made in their manifesto and on the campaign. They promised to reinstitute the Because We Care grant for school children and make it bigger and better, culminating with the grant being $50,000 per child by 2025; double the old-age pension from $20,500 (2020) to $41,000 by 2025; reinstitute the water and electricity subsidies for pensioners, increase public assistance, reintroduce the CDO program for Amerindians, introduce an aggressive and progressive cash grant relief program. The PPP promised to reverse all the new taxes introduced by Jordan and the PNC-led APNU/AFC. These and other safety net programmes to help Guyanese families have been implemented through Budgets 2020 to 2025.
The PPP promised that they would remove fees from the University of Guyana. Budget 2025 accomplished this. The PPP promised that sugar estates that were closed would, where possible, be restarted, and sugar workers who had lost jobs would be reemployed. Rose Hall Estate was restarted in 2024, and will have a full year of operation in 2025. The PPP promised to reverse the dramatic increases in drainage and irrigation fees, agriculture land lease rates, etc. and to reintroduce waiver programmes for VAT on agriculture and mining machinery. All these promises were provided for by the “biggest budget ever” of 2020 to 2025.
The PPP promised to create at least 50,000 new jobs, 50,000 new house lots, 20,000 scholarships for Guyanese to study online, new hospitals, new schools, new industrial centres, new sports facilities, new bridges and highways, generate more electricity, build capacity for non-fossil fuel generation of electricity, complete the Demerara River Bridge, reconstruct the Linden Highway, build a bridge to Suriname, start the construction of the Linden to Lethem Highway, etc. Ashni Singh’s “biggest budget ever” claims for Budgets in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 achieved these things and set a record for 100% adherence to the promises the PPP made in their 2020 manifesto and during the campaign.
In contrast, Jordan’s “biggest budget ever” were never about keeping the promises they made to the Guyanese people in their manifesto and during the campaign. Indeed, every single budget that Jordan and the PNC-led APNU/AFC MPs boasted as the “biggest budget ever” was a budget that disavowed any and all the promises they made.
They promised free university education; they increased the fees at UG. They promised a better program than the Because We Care cash grant for children; instead, they replaced it with a few broken down buses and some bicycles and a couple of boats. They promised public servants and sugar workers a 20% increase in salaries and wages in their first 100 days; instead, they froze sugar workers’ wages and told public servants they must await their turn, after giving themselves a 50 to 100% increase in their salaries and benefits. They promised to double old-age pension in their first 100 days; instead, after five years, the pensioners went from $15,000 per month to $20,500 per month. They promised to increase the tax threshold to $100,000 in their first 100 days; instead, they barely increase from $50,000 in 2015 to $65,000 by 2020. They promised not to close any sugar estate; instead, they closed four. They promised more jobs; instead, they told young people to sell dog food and plantain chips on the road. They promised rice farmers $9,000 per bag of paddy; instead, they told the rice farmers they are private sector and are on their own.
The list goes on and on.
The absolute truth is that for Jordan and the MPs from the PNC-led APNU/AFC, their boast of the “biggest budget ever” in 2015 and subsequently until 2020 were “tax and spend” budgets, rife with corruption. Their “biggest budget ever” were funded on the backs of the Guyanese people via new and increased taxation, burdened future generations with more debts, squandered the reserve, both foreign currency and local Guyanese dollar reserves, plundered the gold reserve, and spent money recklessly without ever empowering the population, without ever improving the physical and social infrastructure, and by destroying the mainstay of the economy – sugar, rice, mining.
The PPP will, over the course of this debate, demonstrate that their “biggest budget ever”, far from being empty sloganeering, propels the country forward, and is a fierce testament to keeping promises, always with the people at the centre.
Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy