Today is Budget Day

…Private Sector expects budget to build on transformational momentum

The eagerly-awaited Budget 2024 will be presented to the National Assembly today by Senior Minister within the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh.
This will be the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government’s fourth national budget since taking office in August 2020.
Up until Sunday evening, Minister Singh and his team at the Finance Ministry were finalising the budget speech, which would be delivered at 14:00h today. This presentation is expected to run for at least five hours.
On Saturday, President Dr Irfaan Ali visited the Finance Ministry to interact with those behind the numbers. During brief remarks, Minister Singh shared that this year’s fiscal plans were designed in the context of continuing Government’s policy framework, which was set out since it entered office in 2020.

The Minister said as was sustained Government policy, there was something for every Guyanese and every sector. He assured that there would be opportunities for “personal upliftment”.
In a sneak peek, Dr Singh noted “Our fiscal plans for 2024 will be situated within the context of the ongoing implementation of the policy framework that we had laid out in the first instance in our 2020 manifesto. What you will hear on Monday is a wide range of interventions in every single sector, all of which are ultimately aimed at improving the lives across every single category of the population.”
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had said last week that the Administration was continuing within the lines of no new taxes for 2024.
Government said Budget 2024 would strike a balance between addressing the pressing needs and irritants of today and simultaneously investing in the future. A primary focus is placed on policies designed to increase the disposable income of Guyanese and their general quality of life.
Last year, the Government presented a whopping $781.9 billion Budget – the first to be financed in part by revenues earned from Guyana’s historic carbon credits sale agreement and the largest-ever in the country’s history. It was approved in its entirely by the National Assembly in February 2023.

Private Sector expectations
Meanwhile, there is an expectation within the local Private Sector that the Government’s fiscal plans and policies outlined in Budget 2024 will build on the momentum that is already seeing massive economic and infrastructural transformation in the country.
Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Komal Singh told Guyana Times that they were looking forward to the national budget for this year being no different than what has been seen in the last three years under the current PPP/C Government.
He pointed out that those fiscal plans have catered for every single facet of society and have seen not only every single Guyanese benefiting but the creation of an environment for businesses to flourish as well.
“There is a lot of expectations, but based on the past, we’ve seen Government meeting the needs of the business society in many forms and this year, we’re not expecting anything different.”
“There is so much government is doing already… We’re very excited that all the investments that we’ve seen Government embarking on, they’re very strategic. And they’re very strategic in a manner that would help businesses to thrive, it would help the country to develop and it would help citizens to benefit from those developments. And most importantly, in the long run, it creates sustainability for our economy and our people,” the PSC Chairman said in a brief comment to this newspaper.
Expounding on the Private Sector’s expectations of Budget 2024, PSC’s Vice Chairman and Executive of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Rafeek Khan, underscored the need to build upon the current momentum and seeing these initiatives to fruition throughout this year and into 2025.
“What happened in our largest budget in 2023, we want to build upon that. So, the momentum that was initiated in infrastructure and in energy, we want to see both capitalisation and taking it to the finish line because to realise the investment that was made, it has to be completed,” he stated.
The new high-span four-lane bridge across the Demerara River, the Linden-to-Lethem Road, the Schoonord-to-Parika highway in Region Three, the expansion of the Railway Embankment road on the East Coast of Demerara, the upgrade of the East Bank Demerara corridor, the alternative highway from New Amsterdam to Moleson Creek in Berbice, and the model Gas-to-Energy project are some of the initiatives that are set to come on stream.
According to Khan, the PSC has made extensive submissions to Government during the consultation stages of Budget 2024. Their proposals, he noted, would help Government to catalyse their economic plans and advance them to the next step.
However, the PSC Vice Chair noted that while businesses have been benefiting from the measures put in place by Government over the past three years, there were still some areas that needed fixing. For stance, he mentioned Value-Added Tax (VAT) on services and the high cost of imports especially in the manufacturing sector.
He also highlighted the need for more centralised industrial hubs for growing businesses.
“Now that we’ve taken care of the infrastructure around the country and the energy future plans, we want to have more industrial hubs, focused and concentrated in similar commodities. So, the movement of raw materials can come into those hubs… For instance, if you produce tiles and stones, you find hubs for that… we need to centralise our hubs for manufacturing in locations that brings down the cost of production,” he noted.
Khan added too that logistics continued to be an area of concern. He said while the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely disrupted this industry globally, was over, shipping continued to be volatile and the high rates persisted especially with recent events in the Red Sea.

In recent days, there have been heightened attacks on ships in the Red Sea which have pushed ocean freight rates higher thus triggering warnings of inflation and delayed goods. This, coupled with the Panama Canal experiencing low water levels caused by drought, has forced many ships to choose a longer route thus creating delays.
“So, we need to be mindful and don’t be too confident that our shipping crisis has been solved,” the Private S0ector official cautioned. He also stressed the need for getting more and bigger vessels to come to Guyana’s ports.
Khan went on to highlight that while Guyana was grappling with a shortage of skilled labour, there was a similar crisis with medium and high-level management in the country.
“We’re not realising that we’re building out the country and we’re building out businesses, but we need to get more high-level management. And is going to have to come from the region, because bringing in these high-level management from Europe, from Asia is very expensive… We need to prepare graduates from the university; have them be prepared to manage companies and so on,” he stated,
According to the PSC Vice Chair, Budget 2024 should also give a greater push to what has already started in the Caribbean in terms of regional integration. For example, he pointed to efforts for the establishment of an economic zone between Guyana and Barbados.
“We want to see some of these things being realized. They’ve started with discussions but we want to see them implemented,” he posited.