Budget puzzles

I am neither an economist nor an expert on modern national financing. Notwithstanding this, like others with whom I shared a deep concern about our much boasted trillion dollars budget, I am confused and bemused.

Clearly, bigger is not better nor biggest the best and I hope that during the next few days simple and ordinary folks like myself will get answers to what follows.

First, we are told that we are the fastest growing economy in the world yet the billions allocated represent according to the PPP top brass loans amounting to forty percent of this massive budget. I am confused.

Second, the Ministry, the Government and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), a year ago admitted that we did not have the personnel to monitor the accounts of these big investors yet we are proceeding like the proverbial bull in the china shop to bring in more investors. Could someone explain?

Next, in this first-time trillion dollar budget, there is no substantial increase on the salaries of government employees. Could someone explain?

The increase to old age pensioners and the lifting of the income tax threshold and other allied measures is an insult to public servants who with others must carry the burden of an increasing cost of living. Could someone explain?

Third, everywhere people protect themselves, their assets and their businesses by putting in place measures to check and ascertain information given then by others. Oil and gas is our new found wealth and we must rely on the transnationals to ascertain how many barrels of oil are being produced and nowhere in the budget have you seen the provision for our Government to purchase meters with complementary equipment and personnel, so that we have the means to ascertain the accuracy of information given to us with respect to the quantity of oil being extracted from our property.

Let me make it clear, I am in no way suggesting dishonest practices by the oil giants and those who are harvesting our massive non-renewable natural resources. But those of us who were around in 1960, when at Baghdad, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established, it was to ensure that those who own the oil that their citizens get a reasonable return from these companies.

But beyond that in normal life and daily transactions, wise people when doing business need to ensure that the figures given can be verified. So why did this massive budget not even provide a token sum to acquire the equipment and accoutrement to monitor quantities being extracted? Editor, please help.

Before the Budget was presented, His Excellency the President assured the nation that the Budget would provide measures and be the mechanism to ease the burden of a high cost of living.

As a simple man, the Budget with these massive infrastructural works is designed wittingly or unwittingly to widen the gap between the already rich, the new rich and the poor.

For the sake of my children and their children, I hope that what is on the horizon is an independent country that has not surrendered its Independence for the proverbial filthy lucre.

Let us hope that we can fulfil the aspirations contained in the third stanza of the Hymn for Guyana’s Children written by Vere T. Daly and set to music by Valerie Rodway:

“But not in vain we’ll strive to build A new Guyana great and free

A land of glory and of hope,

A land of love and unity.”