The debt mountain has expanded

Dear Editor, When President Granger came into office, he came in on a wave that had the support of the most important constituent in any economy (the youths) and he squandered that goodwill with a geriatric collection of public policies that today have rendered him an incompetent pageant President. In 2015, the economy was set to enjoy an upswing in human productivity with fresh ideas from the youths to help diversify the economy into valueadded products in industries where we are good at producing. Yet Team Granger single-handedly contributed to the active destruction of the six main pillars of the economy – the socalled six sisters.

But what was worse was that private sector investment did not pick up, resulting in the Minister of Finance doing an even worse thing by trying to pump up public spending to artificially prop up the economy in a sort of crowding-out strategy. This has done even more damage to the economy. The end result is more taxation and more debt on the taxpayers’ shoulders, compliments of Mr Granger. The debt mountain expanded by some $30 billion in the last 30 months, and is set to expand by a further $20 billion in the 12 months of 2018. That is clearly not a good sign and threatens any economic recovery before 2020. Now economic growth is forecast for Guyana in 2018 at 3.8 per cent, up from the 2.9 per cent projected for 2017, but one cannot believe in these numbers because none of them are real. You want fake news, this is fake news. Guyana will not know what its 2017 growth rate will be until after January 2018, and certainly, that adjustment in the numbers, especially in relation to production in the sugar belt will affect the 2018 numbers. Yours faithfully, Sase Singh