Protecting a trillion-dollar budget
This year, 2024, there occurred a notable departure in the media’s approach to reporting on the budget presentation by Senior Minister in the Ministry of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh (Dr. Singh has had earlier tilts at making what is usually a physically exhausting chore under the title of Minister of Finance).
The shift from media headlining with disclosures on the overall size of the budget and on the respective allocations to state agencies (Ministries el al) arose out of the fact that the country’s overall budgetary allocation had slipped into the trillion mark for the first time in its history ($1.146 trillion, to be exact,) so that in terms of public spending we are, moving forward,, ‘going places.’
The main post-announcement and other talking points about ‘The Budget,’ this year, in the media and at the level of the public, have had to do with the fact of a trillion-dollar budget, the most public and pointed official pronouncement up to this time to the effect that we are beginning to put our petro resources to work in ways that are recorded in public disclosures.
Observers would have noted that the allocations of some state agencies (Ministries) would have entered into the realm of tens of billions, unfamiliar terrain and that, in theory at least, there was now less reason for those entities to ‘throw in’ a scarcity of funding as good reason for failure to either execute or complete critical assignments.. This, mind you, does not mean that reasons may not be conjured up, anyway.
There would, as well, have been occurring, public discourses on the fact that our trilliondollar budgetary allocation for this year provides official confirmation that we are seriously ‘dipping into’ our petro dollars to give effect to promised transformations, a circumstance which, of course, will, justifiably, give rise to inflated public expectations and more assertive demands that promises articulated in the budget presentation which eventually had to be set aside (or left only partially done) on the grounds that they had proven to be beyond in relations, after all, would now be executed without excuse.
The disclosure of a trillion-dollar budget would also have given rise to (and presumably will continue to give rise to) public discourses into issues of a fiduciary nature, particularly with regard to the relationship between trustee (the government) and intended beneficiary (the people of Guyana). Arising out of this circumstance will, presumably emerge, demands that the size of the budget give rise not just to the realization of long-delayed undertakings, but that these be executed with a timeliness that is
consistent with the circumstance of contemporary affordability.
One expects, for example, that issues will arise not just about the extent of the competence that attends the management of the much greater financial allocations but, as well, whether or not the enormous amounts being made available in the budget will not benefit from ‘protection’ of a fiduciary nature. After all, it is almost certain that our trillion-dollar budget is bound to give rise to public prattle as to whether or not there is going to be put in place instruments/mechanisms to protect those resources from the kind of misappropriations and profligate spending that has been known to occur under various public administrations. The question here has to do with whether the fact that the public purse is now more considerable than ever before will be attended by commensurate protective mechanisms against stealing.
Here there will be need for the closure of the gaps that are known to exist in matters of accountability in the management of public funds and that ways are found around what, often, turns out to be distressingly fragile protection mechanisms. Going forward there will be calls, one hopes, for a public and profound closure of those gaps that allow for ‘lapses’ in fiduciary obligations.
Here it has to be said that it would be a complete waste of time and effort to issue stern warnings through high-sounding but hopelessly impotent circulars on issues like responsibility and accountability. It is no secret that such measures usually fall into the realm of window-dressing. Regretful as it is to reiterate, corruption at the level of the state has long become an ingrained reality, official threats of discomfiting consequences for the perpetration of the practice continually failing to elicit corresponding desistance.
If oil has ‘made its play’ in a manner that has now caused us to sit up and take notice and begin to envisage a quality of transformation that is embedded in more than hopes and dreams, we need to remind ourselves that the phenomenon of the resource curse is yet to take a break from its marauding, infectious ways. That is a reality which the people of Guyana, as a whole, lose sight of at their own peril.