Coalition administration has lied to Guyanese

Dear Editor,
Economic policies establish the framework upon which governments intend to address a country’s growth and development prospects. They get into office on these, and they also get booted for noncompliance or failure to realize commitments. One of the things about which few, if any of us, can disagree on is that we have been lied to by the coalition administration on the campaign trail going into the 2015 elections.
Nowhere on their campaign trail did they ever mention that they would be returning to Burnham’s policies and ideas on development. They have also made a complete u-turn on their commitment to addressing unemployment.
Growth in private sector loans, an indicator of economic activity, plunged from an average of G$17.4 billion in the two and a half years prior to June 2015, to an average of G$7.6 billion for the two and a half years of the coalition’s administration, ended December 2015.
The first major concern is Government’s willy-nilly attitude to destroying our nation’s wealth by running up its overdraft facilities with the Bank of Guyana. At the rate the economy is going, there is little if any likelihood of this money ever being recovered by 2020.
Secondly, increases in deficit financing by governments typically give rise to increased economic activity, which is usually underpinned by increased private sector borrowing. This is not happening.
Finally, based on current trends, it seems reasonable to assume the coalition administration will continue its ill-informed policy of abusing its overdraft facilities with the Bank of Guyana.
The last thing Guyanese seriously expect is that the G$30 billion the administration is investing in GuySuCo will return the company to global competitiveness and profitability. It would be irresponsible of me or anyone to say that our economy has crashed, or is crashing; but the figures just presented, which were extracted from the banking system statistics published by the Bank of Guyana, suggest exactly this.
It seems pretty clear the administration’s fiscal programme is not generating growth; and worse, is destroying our nation’s financial resources. The coalition administration is tying our feet and asking us to run.

Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester