Apprehension
This article offers some observations on the half-year economic report which are made from the perspective of the likely behaviour induced by movement of the monetary variables of credit, foreign reserves and the exchange rate. A full discourse on this subject would be too much for this article so it would only look at the implications for consumer and business spending. Before proceeding, a comment about the data is necessary. Stabroek News was able to produce figures from sources which cited the Guyana Forestry Commission and which contradicted those on timber production and exports supplied by the government in its mid-year report; an explanation for the discrepancy is still to be offered. This presentation thus notes that there are questions about the reliability of some of the data which exist and that in itself raises questions about the validity of the entire mid-year report. The trustworthiness of some public officials has been in doubt for several years now with a non-functioning Integrity Commission. Those doubts have been reinforced by Guyana’s low ranking in the perception of corruption that Transparency International publishes and the frequent qualified opinions of public accounts of the Auditor-General. This is in addition to the scepticism expressed periodically by Professor Clive Thomas and others for whom the reliability of public data has long been a sore point.
Some explanations about the performance of the economy are usually found in the half-year report of the Bank of Guyana (BOG). That report also provides information on how production, consumption and international trade activities behave in response to changes in the monetary variables. Unfortunately, the BOG’s half-year report has not been released as yet. Since there is a query about the reliability of official data in this article, one could wonder how beneficial it would be to use any information produced by Guyanese officials. This article makes the following assumptions about monetary