Jordan’s inability to rebalance growth poles (Part 1)

Dear Editor,
This 2017 Budget again exposed that the Finance Minister Winston Jordan is not up to the job of rebalancing Guyana’s growth poles to ensure that we secure a growth rate of more than 5 per cent in 2017 and beyond. His ability to create policies to steer the economy in 2016 exposes a total abandonment of his duty to the people with that perilous performance so far – 2.6 per cent. Such a growth rate will never be able to offer the ‘Good Life’. Only a certified fool will believe such nonsense!
But as one digs into the speech, very little of it is assigned to measures that are constructed to drive the engine of growth to be more export oriented. So while the corporation tax to 27.5 per cent is better than nothing, it masks a scheme of tax deception with that so-called dual tax rates for companies. Why all these tax trickeries by the Minister?  Why not come out plain and simple and give the private sector a flat 27.5 per cent?
Then when one looks at the incentives for the new foreign direct investment gear for the export markets, it is patchy at best. So while GO-Invest claims that it facilitated some 6,000 jobs, there were no clear specifics as to the names of some of these companies that made these new investments. Such opacity as the source of these round number claims can make these claims untrustworthy especially in light of the fact that only a few months ago the Business Minister claimed that there are now new fruits borne from his trips abroad.
But more importantly, this budget is geared to crowding out the private sector as the government is now competing for the limited resources in the economy? This is a major policy mistake by the Minister.
All efforts should have been made to also rebalance the economy by stimulating a shift from services to manufacturing as a source of new jobs, as well as driving economic growth. But as the budget outlined, manufacturing is in the doldrums and there is no hope for this sector in 2017 compliments of this anti-manufacturing budget.
The manufacturing sector is expected to decline by 7.1 per cent in 2016, but yet we cannot find one sensible measure in this 2017 Budget to reverse this trend. Even the credit to the manufacturing sector is set to decline by some 2.8 per cent in 2016, which translate to business houses refusing to borrow and expand their manufacturing businesses. This is a terrible economic sign that exposes the fact that there is a limited attempt by the Minister to rebalance the growth poles.

Sincerely,
Sasenarine Singh