Over the last decade, there have been two sets of concerns — not entirely unconnected — raised about economic distribution in Guyana; and both have highlighted the issue of distributive justice. Firstly, there were charges that the overall economic policy of the PPP favoured Indians at the expense of Africans. Charges of “marginalisation,” and even “economic genocide,” were made by elements in the African Guyanese community during the tenure of the PPP regime, echoing the similar cries of the Indians during the PNC’s rule, between 1964 and 1992. After the PNC-led APNU/AFC assumed office in 2015, with 10,000 jobs in the sugar industry on the line, those cries have been renewed.
Secondly, there has been the historical complaint about the uneven geographical development – specifically, that Demerara in general, and Georgetown in particular, receives a disproportionate share of the national developmental thrust. Poverty rates in some hinterland communities rose one hundred percent between 1992 and 1999, for instance. These complaints, which are grounded on a perception that justice is not being served, have been some of the main fuels of the ethnic fire.
What we have seen is that, in severely divided societies, governmental policies are not judged on intentions but on results, and even that will be judged by very subjective criteria. Certain policies which may appear facially neutral can have differential ethnic impact. Take, for instance, a key plank in the economic strategy pushed by the multilaterals – agricultural development in Guyana. From a standpoint of comparative advantage, it makes sense for Guyana to concentrate on agricultural development in the near term, but since Indians dominate this sector, we can be sure that African Guyanese will have severe problems — as they demonstrated in the ‘60s — with a strategy that makes agriculture its central focus. This may be why this government has a hands-off attitude to agriculture.
After a period of rapid growth engendered by the IMF/World Bank-dictated Economic Recovery Programme, beginning in 1991 under the PNC — wherein the economy expanded primarily in the traditional areas that had collapsed – it ran out of steam. The GDP growth rate since 1997 has not even reached an average of four percent since. This was far below the ten percent deemed necessary to initiate a self-sustaining level of prosperity. Presently, the rate of GDP growth has slowed to 3% and sinking. The evidence has made it manifest by now that the economic regime imposed by the ‘Washington Consensus’ — and still guiding governmental policies — may be necessary, but certainly not sufficient to facilitate a level of growth sufficient to ensure the requisite growth rate.
It is not enough to pin all our hopes on oil revenues starting in 2020, as those in and of themselves will not solve our economic ennui. Our sugar windfalls in 1974 and 1982 were frittered away without registering any long-term impact on the economy. To stimulate such a necessary high growth rate, we propose creation of a Catalytic Entrepreneurial State (CES). To assure an even distribution of development between the various ethnic groups, the ‘Ethnic Impact Statement” that the APNU/AFC Manifesto proposed to evaluate governmental policies must be implemented. Affirmative Action Programmes such as the government has already embarked on in their traditional constituency are also needed, but they must be subjected to CES tests.
An Entrepreneurial State must be strong, but at the same time not centralised, authoritarian, and ethnically-dominated, as is becoming evident with the present Government. The functions of the state can be distributed into multiple layers and segments, so as to deliver a greater likelihood of success of development goals. Even with the unitary state, not all state actions are negative; and, in fact, there may be the necessity for government interventions when the free market or community coordinating mechanisms are stymied for one reason or other — market failure or community breakdown.
The litmus test of proposed activities would be for the state to implement policies that strengthen market and community coordination, to promote growth and development. The present ethnically skewed policies must go.
