From its inception in May 2015, the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) made it very clear – agriculture is not its priority. In fact, after almost 30 months in Government and after the presentation of its fourth National Budget, it is crystal clear that APNU/AFC considers agriculture an orphan industry. Budget 2018 is disastrous for Guyana in many ways. One very definitive piece of evidence of how disastrous Budget 2018 is, is to examine the agriculture budget. While APNU/AFC calls Budget 2018 “Continuing the Journey to the Good Life”, farmers and the Guyanese people as a whole can only see Budget 2018 as “Continuing the Journey to Orphaning Agriculture”.
Like its predecessor budgets since 2015, Budget 2018 singles out agriculture for cuts in financing. Budget 2018 provides more than $3 billion less for agriculture than Budget 2014 did, or almost 15 per cent less since 2014. Agriculture has received a cut of almost $1 billion in 2018, compared to the 2017 Budget. At a time when the overall budget is at least 33 per cent larger than the 2014 budget and at a time when the budget for the Office of the President has doubled, it makes no sense that agriculture funding has declined in every budget since 2015. This is unprecedented in a democratic Guyana; the agriculture budget increased every year since 1992.
This is the sector that employs more than 33 per cent of the country’s workforce and accounts for more than 40 per cent of the export earnings. In fact, the largest annual private investment in Guyana is in the agriculture sector. For example, rice farmers, mostly small rice farmers, invest more than $30 billion in the economy annually. This is outside investment by millers, truckers, small vendors and shippers. Added together the rice industry sees an investment of more than $40 billion annually. Overall, agriculture (including rice, sugar, cash crop farming, poultry industry, livestock, fishing etc) conservatively invest more than $80 billion in private investment annually. Moreover, Guyana is a food-secured country because of its robust agriculture sector. It, therefore boggles the mind that APNU/AFC sees it “fit and proper” to cut funding for agriculture.
Shamefully, Budget 2018 ignored unemployed sugar workers and their families. Since thousands of sugar workers will lose their jobs in 2018, in addition to the more than 2000 that lost their jobs in 2017, because of sugar factory and estate closures, one would have thought that special funding would have been allocated in Budget 2018 to provide alternative ways for sugar workers and their families to earn a living. It is not just the sugar workers and their families, it is also the many small businesses, such as the market vendors, the tailors, the small groceries, the taxi drivers etc, who will now find themselves struggling. These communities deserve and are owed safety net arrangements, similar to what Lindeners enjoy, such as electricity subsidies. Not a single word in either the budget documents, nor in the Minister’s address to the Parliament! Shameful. The after-thought announcement by the Business Minister that the European Union will fund a study on the way forward for sugar workers is not good enough.
Budget 2018, like predecessor budgets since 2015, totally ignored small-scale and medium-size agriculture processing. The example of the turmeric processing plant in Region One provides an example of what the Government must do. The turmeric processing plant in Region One was planned since 2012, during my time as Agriculture Minister. Farmers in Region One can make a better living with a product that is in demand in Guyana. Now Guyana can significantly reduce its import of turmeric powder. The plantain chip factory in Wakenaam, Essequibo River; and the rice cereal factory in Region Two are initiatives the APNU/AFC has taken credit for, even though they lambasted the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) for these initiatives between 2012 and 2015. There is nothing in Budget 2018 to encourage efforts like these, efforts that create better opportunities for our farmers and can significantly reduce food imports and add to our exports.
The initiatives to introduce locally produced potato, onion, garlic, carrots, milk, meat-products, etc, that provide revenue-generating opportunities for small farmers and reduce more than US$100 million in food importation started several years ago. Guyanese farmers and the excellent work being done at NAREI must be commended for the progress they have made in this regard. But Budget 2018 ignores these initiatives and makes no provision to drive these initiatives. Incidentally, large farms, such as those in Region Nine, which the PPP promoted to meet the growing demand for locally produced raw materials, such as soya, corn and quinoa, for feedstocks, cooking oil and bio-fuels have made little to no progress since 2015.
My message to APNU/AFC is to remember the words of Samuel Johnson – “Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches it can call her own”.
