Grant funding to Guyana plummets in 1st quarter of 2020

ꟷ drop by over 90%, coinciding with period of election “rigging”

The Bank of Guyana (BoG) has revealed that for the first quarter of this year, Guyana’s capital revenue from sources that included grants and debt relief took a nosedive of over 90 per cent, coinciding with the period of political uncertainty before and after the March 2 General and Regional Elections.

This is contained in the Bank’s recently-released quarterly report and statistical bulletin for the first quarter of 2020, which revealed that total capital revenue for the period amounted to $369 million.
“Total capital revenue, including grants & debt relief, fell by 94.1 per cent to G$369 million. Local capital receipts recorded earnings of G$1.3 million during the review period,” the report explains.
“Grants and debt relief were lower by 94.2 per cent to G$368 million, mainly due to the lack of grants during the first quarter of 2020, while debt relief from Enhanced HIPC (E-HIPC) decreased by 0.7 per cent to G$368 million.”
While the report does not specify the reason for the slowdown in grants from other countries and organisations, it falls within the period of election campaigning and the efforts of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to prepare for General and Regional Elections.
In addition, the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) has been in caretaker status since December 2018 when it lost a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) in Parliament.
Instead of calling elections within three months as it was supposed to, the coalition fought court battle after court battle over several months in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the NCM. During this time, several foreign funding development projects were on standstill. That situation still obtains today, as Guyana awaits a fully functional government to take office.
It is now approaching five months since Guyanese cast their votes. A national recount had shown that the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP/C) won the elections with 233,336 votes while the APNU/AFC coalition garnered 217,920.
Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chair, Retired Justice Claudette Singh had written to Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield and instructed him to prepare a final report based on the recount.
Instead, Lowenfield had submitted a report invalidating over 115,000 voters based on unsubstantiated allegations of dead and migrant voters, made by the APNU/AFC. Lowenfield’s actions caused an immediate uproar and the varying sides found themselves before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) for the Irfaan Ali et al v Eslyn David et al case.
Among other decisions, the CCJ ruled that Lowenfield’s report, which arbitrarily disenfranchised voters, was invalid and that the concerns raised by the APNU/AFC coalition must be addressed in an elections petition.
The GECOM Chair wrote Lowenfield again, instructing him to submit his report so that the President could be declared. However, Lowenfield then engaged in a back and forth with the Chair in which sections of the CCJ judgement were twisted and misconstrued.
He then submitted a fraudulent report to Justice Singh, in which he included the fraudulent declarations of embattled Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, which inaccurately showed that the PPP/C gained 80,920 votes while the APNU/AFC received 116,941 votes in Region Four.
The inaccuracy of those numbers was widely proven during the recount exercise, as it was unearthed that Mingo heavily inflated the votes in favour of the APNU/AFC to give them a false victory.
Last week, seemingly fed up of the multiple efforts by APNU/AFC to thwart the work of GECOM, the United States announced that it was slapping officials in Guyana who are undermining democracy with visa restrictions.
The decision was announced by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, during a press conference. According to Pompeo, these visa restrictions can also be applied to the immediate family members of those persons.
Pompeo did not name the officials who were targeted. Indeed, US Ambassador to Guyana, Sarah Ann-Lynch has said that for privacy reasons, the names will not be disclosed. However, Guyana Times has received reports that the list includes a prominent financier of the APNU/AFC Government, as well as several APNU/AFC Ministers, election officials, and even judicial officers.