– geriatrics in power will not be around to pay one cent of debt they are incurring today
Guyana is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, but has a wealth of natural resources, including fertile agricultural land, minerals and large swaths of tropical forest. Even with all these natural wealth, the youth employment crisis is among the worst in the Caricom family.
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) estimated the youth unemployment rate in Guyana at 40 per cent. But because so many rural youths are not counted in this statistic, this number could be much higher if a proper labour force survey was conducted. The last proper Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) was published in 1993. This is a pathetic performance from the Bureau of Statistics and on this score, the PPP Administration must be held accountable. How can a nation plan for its future without such an important collection of data?
But despite this data handicap, the other evidence clearly establishes that the higher rate of under and unemployment in the youth population creates significant obstacles to the young people unleashing their potential to becoming economically independent. This is a crucial first step in the transition to adulthood. The effect for failing to facilitate economic independence for a larger amount of youths at the macro-level is retardation in national development.
So even after two years of Granger, Guyana still has no solid employment data. Why are the Guyanese policymakers so steeped in this practice of conducting high-level policy-making with fake data? An example of this “guess-estimating” is the presentation of a national budget before year-end. That document was populated with highly unrealistic fake data on the key economic benchmarks from the production figures to the investment figures.
If we really are serious about unleashing the potential of the nation, it is important to explore how the local socio-economic and political structures and processes are blocking the youths from eking out a livelihood and how this challenge can be alleviated. But when a government starts to present annual budgets with FAKE DATA, then it clearly establishes the Government’s lack of commitment at identifying the tools needed to navigate this developmental challenge.
Rather the PNC-led Granger Government continues to over invest in political pensions for friends and family and to hijack the Treasury to fulfil a personality fetish with pomp, ceremony, and pageantry. But such an agenda actively destroys the Guyanese economy and has continued that dangerous process of vigorously chasing the progressive youths out of the country. The “carrot” offered as a comeback by the Granger Government is the “first flow day” for oil is soon. But any rational mind will know that oil before 2020 is nothing but a sand castle in a storm.
Until and unless we charter a course to work our way out of this mess by increasing our net exports of our current products, encouraging more Foreign Direct Investment in new product lines up the value chain and unleashing the remittance potential of the Diaspora for the nation’s benefit, we are stuck with a broken model. I speak specifically of the Granger model of taxing more, borrowing more and spending more on pageantry which actually weakens the long-term prospects of the nation.
But the geriatrics in power will not be around to pay one cent of the debt that they are incurring today in the name of the youths of Guyana. They will not be around to clean up the economic mess they are causing. It is nothing but wicked and evil for a person to “max-out” some else’s credit card today without their permission. This is what the Granger Government is doing today – running up the debts of Guyana and then saddling the youths to pay for it tomorrow.
So the youths of Guyana can expect more taxes, fewer jobs, less quality and affordable foods on the table and definitely a more challenging path to owning your own house between now and 2020. If one carefully analysed the appointments by the Granger Administration, the retirees dominate at all levels and this strategy only serves to crowd out opportunities for the youth. This is clearly not how you develop a nation with such a lopsided marginalisation of the youths. But tell that to the Pageantry President who cannot construct one rational policy after two years to empower, engage and unleash the potential of the youths.
