Dear Editor,
The PPP has spent over $1.45 trillion (US$7.257 billion) in the last 19 years. The actual number in current-day value is $1451400000000. As Christopher Ram noted in his ‘Focus on Guyana’s National Budget 2010’ (SN, February 11, 2010), this number does not include VAT and other amounts unaccounted for. This is an astronomical amount of spending over 19 years, particularly when we have nothing of substance to show for it. This is a country with negligible population growth. Therefore, this level of spending should have yielded solid results and realised significant growth. Plus, with the amount of remittances sent to Guyanese every year as ‘free cash’ and debt relief, US$7.257 billion in the hands of competent economic managers would have lifted this country to great heights, not have it suffocate itself.
Of that US$7.257 billion the PPP spent in the past 19 years, approximately $1.6 billion has been borrowed locally and from the IMF, World Bank and countries such as China, Venezuela, etc. Yes, at this rate the PPP will surpass the PNC’s US$2.2 billion debt level in less than 28 years.
The Guyanese people will have to repay this money. The question is quite simple: where is the progress and development from spending US$7.257 billion in 19 years? Don’t tell me about a four-lane highway or modern sugar factory or hydroelectric power. Extending an existing 2-lane road into 4 lanes at a ridiculous cost is not building a four-lane highway. You can’t eat a road.
Nor will an empty and constantly breaking down sugar factory lower your cost of living. An empty hospital built for show in the middle of nowhere will not cut your electricity bill. A washed-away road will not lower the price of fuel. It may end your life in a speeding minibus in a country where lawlessness and disorder rules. Or the bandits may use this road to get to you faster.
Building infrastructure in the absence of law and order and the creation of a sound economic foundation ends up wasting money. It ends up funding corruption, causing carnage and sets people up for criminals to prey upon them. I will tell you where the US $7.257 billion went. Pockets were filled. That’s where a lot of it went. A lot was wasted. Incompetence masquerading behind high-falutin qualifications killed off another chunk. Then corruption stole another portion of it. If you get a new road for twice the price of what it really cost is that true progress? Similarly, if you get a bridge that lasts half of its shelf life, is that progress?
Is it development if you get a bridge that is too expensive for locals to use? Education is gone to the dogs. Crime is escalating. Basic human rights are missing. An employer can savagely beat an employee on suspicion of a crime and pay the victim to shut up. Drug cartel frontmen walk these streets as untouchables and mighty kings.
The poor are struggling to pay for food that is running away in price.
The cost of living is going to the sky. A few have benefited immensely. But there is no way that what we see is the result of the proper spending of $1.45 trillion dollars or US$7.257 billion over 19 years. Where did our money go?
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
