Dear Editor,
Your columnist Mr Rawle Lucas wrote an interesting piece in his column of Sunday August 2, 2015 in which he published Bank of Guyana figures on public and private expenditure. Of note was that private spending by consumers decreased by $49 billion in 2014 from 2013 figures.
This simple, but salient, data tells us that fiscal policy in this year’s budgetary estimates has to be geared toward improving consumer disposable income so that more can be spent in the economy.
While the government is talking a lot about pay increases, handouts and expending funds to improve disposable income, it needs to be cognizant that it can also do so without spending.
For instance, government can take the advice of letter to the editor contributor Mr Vishnu Sukhandan and reduce taxes on petroleum products so as to pass on the very low cost that fossil fuels are now commanding on the global market to citizens through lower prices at the pump.
Another method available to government is to remove the outrageously high tariff on imported chicken, which retails locally for around $400 per lb but can be imported, with profit markup consideration, and sold for around $200 per lb. Just imagine the billions that would be put back into consumers’ pockets and the economy!
Government has to be careful on how it spends, considering the perilous state of our major earning sectors, and it needs to not only look at ways to incentivize the private sector directly (eg, concessions to miners) but also to incentivize consumers directly by removing taxes that stifle their income.
Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling
