The closest that this newspaper was able to come to getting anyone in authority to talk about some of the likely features of the APNU-AFC coalition’s first full annual budget came during an extended interview with Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin on Wednesday.
Even then, the minister did not deal with the specifics of what Finance Minister Winston Jordan will put before the nation today. Instead, he dealt with what one might call its underpinnings, that is, its underlying focus, the signals that it seeks to send and the manner in which it should be interpreted. What he did too was to put into perspective Minister Jordan’s budget presentation last year which could, at the time, best be described as a holding position.
What Minister Gaskin told this newspaper in essence was that today’s budget presentation will provide definitive clues to the political administration’s developmental road map. It is, he suggested, the beginning of a process that will see budgets in subsequent budget presentations add incrementally to a longer-term economic policy that will extend itself over the administration’s five-year tenure.
Mindful, perhaps, of not delving prematurely into specifics, the minister did not go much further though he made it easier for us to surmise the budget’s concerns would be with setting down the first set of building blocks, the foundation to the envisaged ‘better life’ which has now been adopted as a sort of national slogan for the administration’s economic way forward.
If we are to take that slogan as an envisaged reality then, surely, today’s budget presentation would have to be about, a priori, initiatives that are focused on real job-creation, not short-term ‘hold-ons’ that are unlikely to take job-seekers beyond tomorrow but longer-term employment out of which can come real benefits for the employed and their families and for the nation as a whole.
That, we believe is likely to much of the basis of a budget which, one hopes, will focus on among other things, maximizing opportunities for access to education and training, creating more incentives for private sector growth, attracting investment into the country and, crucially, ushering in a growth regime for the small business sector that will provide employment alternatives.
Hopefully too, whatever investment is envisaged for education will include more meaningful investment in the University of Guyana, which, presumably, will now be required to rise to the greater challenges of training arising out of the country’s need to look to new vistas arising out of the country’s oil find and the need – however far down the road – to cope with oil exploitation. At an entirely different level one expects that this budget will point the way forward in terms of government’s disposition to the small business sector, which indications are going to have to be measured by what it is prepared to invest in this particular sub-sector.
How much we can afford to invest in the social sector is always a challenging question though high levels of unemployment and underemployment mean the social security expenditure will have to be a consideration. Here, the administration will, one assume, be mindful of its overarching obligation to the old and the infirm.
There can be no question than that the government cannot put on hold for much longer the issue of public sector wages and salaries if only because no one can any longer question the nexus between pay levels and efficiency. If officials of the government have argued that the administration did what it could with what it had in 2015 they must equally be aware that in a relatively short period a considerable and justifiable expectation has built up regarding salary increases for public servants. That too is an expectation that cries out for a measure of fulfillment.
