…in the economy
and here it was your Eyewitness thought the Government – at least the President and his Cabinet would’ve sat down and had their own first-year review of steering the shop of state. Prezzie didn’t back down from his assertion things “na regulah” because the six sisters of the traditional economy – sugar, rice, bauxite, gold, diamond and timber – were all “anaemic”.
But here came his Finance Minister Jordan, contradicting his boss and claiming the conceded downturn in the economy was really due to the sterling efforts of our lawmen in nipping nefarious criminal efforts in the bud! All the money usually garnered from crimes and pumped into the economy by free-spending criminals had all dried up because of the new, invigorated efforts of our men in blue!
Really? So does the Finance Minister have a base line on which he makes his assertion? Take cocaine smuggling. After all, the number of armed robberies doesn’t seem to’ve decreased significantly when compared to those of the last years. How does the Honourable Minister know that in fact even more drugs aren’t being transhipped through our borders?
Did Dataram, who willingly gave some details of what’s going down in the drug trade, say CANU officers aren’t returning as high a percentage of seized drugs back into the streets? Do we have some numbers from the new DEA office that’s been set up here? Or is it they’ve had a “chilling effect” on the drug trade? We expect loose talk with no cause and effect linkages from the Minister of Public Security – with his wild speculations on reducing crime by closing bars at 2pm – but a Minister of Finance? Jeez!!
Economics aspires to be “Queen of the Social Sciences” and Finance plugs in more of those equations than any sub-field of economics. We expect a little more rigorous analysis, nuh? But moving on to answer the second question – “whatcha gonna do ’bout it?”, the Minister again flattered to deceive. He did start out on the right foot by asserting there “will have” to be some “stimulus” to prime pump the economy.
But he didn’t elaborate. Instead he went on to suggest more “value added” industries were necessary. And interestingly enough, picked gold. We should take our raw gold and make “coins”. Coins? Does the Minister really believe our coins – which would have to be legal tender – will be worth a premium when we dilute their content?
And making them into jewellery? Didn’t he hear SARU just defined all jewellery as “money” and can seize anything more than US$10,000 worth?
That’s just 8 ozs of gold bling! Half of our Jubilee visitors might end up in jail?
…with Public Servants
Prezzie just delivered some tough love to Public Servants. Stop dawdling on the job, he said, and maybe they’ll get a raise. Maybe. And in this he’s going to get a helluva lot of support from the man in the street. In Guyana, politicians pander too much just to get votes. When the PPP came into office in 1992, the IMF had already issued a directive to the PNC Government to radically reduce the Public Service. (Just as they recently ordered the Barbados Government.)
President Hoyte duly started pruning and called it “retrenchment”. In came the PPP in 1992 and put a halt to the downsizing! They wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Public Servants. True story – just check the figures! Point is, when they DID want to improve “efficiency”, it was too late. Napping on the job was once again taken as an entitlement.
President Granger’s wise to demand increased productivity for increased pay!
…in sugar
What happened? One day after the announcement that Tony Vieira was appointed “Director of Field Operations”, GuySuCo announced there’s “no such position” in the corporation.
So what is Vieira? Head rat catcher? They certainly need one since those critters are wreaking havoc in the cane fields.
