One of the principle reasons we have a government is to promote the general welfare of all. How to do this economically? By helping the market forces work better. The State acts as an arbiter between the owners of capital and the users of capital to legislate order and greater fairness.
The ruling politicians have forgotten the narrative on why they were elected in 2015. Because of this major mistake, the entire economic system is collapsing. Rather the focus of the ruling politicians remains – using the Government to serve their self-interest rather than the people’s. Such a strategy will always put the domestic tranquility of the nation at risk and will have long-term adverse consequences.
When a Government borrows almost GY$53 billion from the Central Bank as at April 25, 2018, and cannot explain to the people why, then Guyana has got BIG ISSUES. Although this story broke two weeks ago, the Finance Minister still has the audacity to bury his head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich on this gross act of mal-administration. Today, the Central Bank is at its weakest financially in decades and continues to get weaker as its total assets continue to shrink. This has to stop.
The solution lies in coordinating with the Private Sector and the workers to spread innovation and business expansion seamlessly. Easier said than done, but if you start by redesigning the National Budget to make the business community and the workers your primary clients rather than the ruling politicians, economic progress is assured. But even more importantly, Guyana has to become a training mill to help the workers to up-skill in the right skills and quickly. In this new world order, human skills have to match the job, not the other way around. Thus, we must stimulate our people to re-invent themselves constantly. But after spending over GY$30 billion on the education sector per year in the last decade and the Maths pass rate in 2017 at still below 33 per cent, mass inequality is guaranteed. The empirical evidence is clear; we have to evaluate the outcome of the dollars spent because it is not benefiting the students.
Rather, all of this spending is helping to increase the concentration of the national wealth into the hands of a small governing cabal along with their business buddies and the evidence is clear, this system has not worked for decades. So why would it work in 2018? This mentality of the People’s National Congress of “WE WON, WE PUN TAP”, is utter foolishness and is a principle reason why innovation and entrepreneurship continues to be driven out of the country. The outcome of such a narrow political and economic strategy is certain economic decline. What are the new innovations in Guyana? Plantain chips?
There are consequences for such an infantile economic strategy. Income will stagnate, jobs will disappear, the tax base will flatline in aggregate amounts, small companies will run into bankruptcy in increasing numbers, aggregate demand will evaporate and there will be a general environment of hopelessness across the majority of the population. Once such an atmosphere takes hold in the economy, it will take years to walk back to the centre where people are willing to trust, take greater risk and invest more. The first order of business of any incoming Government in 2020 is to spur innovation and new investments using the State machinery as the stimulus to drive the necessary change in attitudes and mindsets. Thus any new Government of Guyana post 2020 must establish two super-Ministries with highly talented leaders – firstly a Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) like Japan, Singapore and Korea that is focused on sell Guyana internationally as a global investment hub that is ready and willing to embrace private enterprise, entrepreneurs and human talent. This entire Foreign Affairs Ministry has to be dismantled and reconstructed as an economic machine with the obligatory authority to sell the potentials of Guyana.
The second big Ministry shall be an expanded Finance Ministry and Economic Development (MFED) that will run the fiscal and monetary policies of the nation but more importantly will develop, evaluate and monitor the implementation of a 10-year national development plan. We must not only talk about the road to Lethem or a deep water harbour or hydropower plant, we must do it! The vision is a ring-fenced relationship in a triangle of action between the Office of the President, the MITI, and the MFED. Big decisions that are taking months today to make under this current Granger Administration must be made within days in the new post-2020 Government of Guyana; if not hours.
The entire process has an endgame which destroys the Darwinian mentality of “winner take all”. Guyana has to change the way we educate our people, we employ our people, we remunerate our people and the way the system embraces new investments. Politics will not be a criterion, investments and new jobs created should be the dominant factors.
Guyana cannot continue on this journey, it is a highway to gross unhappiness for the people. As the ancient Greeks once reminded us, the primary purpose of a Government is to improve the lives of its citizens. When will President Granger get it!
