A budget to ‘write home’ about
A great deal of the state-orchestrated hype that followed the promulgation of the country’s maiden trillion-dollar budget had to do with the kind of messaging that the government wished to disseminate at the start of 2023. The New Year provided opportune moments for resetting and, as well, for leaving behind the baggage of the previous year. It is the same for governments as it is, all too frequently, for people. Here it has to be said that the government got its New Year’s wish without really having to go looking for it. In our circumstances, it could hardly have gotten better having a trillion dollars to spend in 2024. Even now, some of the hype and hoopla that attended the budget presentation still persists.
While a measure of, first, anticipation, then chatter never fails to attend the promulgation of a Budget, whatever its size, this time around it was different. From the government’s standpoint the size of the budget would have helped, considerably, to make the case for its ‘good governance’ assertion and for the argument that Guyana is ‘going places’ under its occupancy of office. It was, as well, robust and that nudged us further away from Thirdworldism and that our oil wealth was now ‘kicking in’ for real.
In such an environment the government would, arguably, have anticipated a lesser level of opposition criticism in what Dr. Singh had to say. The ‘trillion-dollar caper’ and the generous consequential ‘topping up’ of the allocations afforded the state agencies would, one suspects, have helped to douse some of the carping criticisms of the Budget that usually emanate from the other side of the political divide and from sections of the populace that feel, for one reason or another, the budget provides reason to frown.
For a brief period, the government and its supporters occupied a space customarily set aside for the exercise of ‘bragging rights’ and for the parading of the ‘accomplishments’ spectacle of the Budget presentation. It was a day for parading ‘accomplishments’ through pronouncements that are usually excessively embellished. The 2024 Budget with its trillion-dollar tag line provides a window of opportunity for government to haul in a modicum of ‘support’ in those quarters that are pleased with its offerings before there occurs the inevitable swing of the pendulum that causes detractors to burst the bubble.
After that it will, in a sense, be “business as usual” insofar as far as the managing of the country’s first trillion-dollar budget is concerned. Here it should be noted that, among other things, the size of the budget imposes its own ‘burdens’ not least those that have to do with prudent disbursements and evasion of challenges that have to do with profligate misdirecting of spending. There is, however, some time ahead before those issues come to the fore.