Dear Editor,
In 2016, Guyana’s per capita GDP was about US$6,000 while its growth rate was about 4%. Roughly speaking, if Guyana had continued along the same trajectory, it would have taken us about 23 years to have a per capita GDP of US$12,000. Today, a short 7 years after 2016, our per capita GDP is more than US$20,000 – higher than Barbados. We have achieved this phenomenal outcome in a third of the time it might have otherwise taken. I remember telling students back in 2014 that it would take us a very long time to have a per capita income that is comparable to Barbados’. Oil, and oil rents, and nothing else, have made the difference. But with this rapid growth has come an increase in our realised “pure rate of time preference,” a key parameter in the determination of a host of national and individual outcomes. Here is a list of things that reflect a very high rate of time preference, or impatience:
• The frenetic, record-breaking speed of development of our offshore oil resources, with new wells and FPSOs becoming so ‘normal’ that we no longer need reports on their occurrence
• Dizzying acceleration of our oil production from zero to a soon-to-be one million bpd in less than a decade, with top-speed not too far from today
• Construction of residential, hotel, and office buildings at a fantastic rate, both by the private and the public sectors
• Infrastructure growth, especially of roads and bridges, but also offshore support bases, airports, school buildings and hospital buildings, an artificial island, and soon to come a new city, that all seem to be happening overnight
• A phenomenal growth in government expenditure, with the 2024 budget being “higher than the combined budget for 2015-2018,” to quote a useful characterisation
• A corresponding, mind-boggling, increase in our capital stock – imported trucks, bulldozers, excavators, cement mixers, steel, and whatnot
• A concomitant and rapid increase in our extraction of petroleum, sand and stone, and even timber resources, without much thought of the opportunity costs involved
• And before we catch our breath, a gas-to-shore pipeline and power plant all in place for start-up even if we have to finance it ourselves; and a sugar refinery that is already in the pipeline – neither of which could wait on feasibility studies.
We are in a rush too, when it comes to the softer things. Hardly had we interred the 20 children who died in a tragic but completely avoidable inferno, we had parents signing away any contingent claims for a mess of pottage; we then produced a COI report that exonerated the real decision-makers who set the tone for others to follow, as our way of laying the matter – and the memories – to rest. We did the same, rushing to open and name something we called a Heroes Highway, to lay to rest any potential concerns about a horrific helicopter crash that also was avoidable. We issue permits and pursue litigation even if it means that regulatory agencies join regulated entities in the proceedings; we rush to sign a complex document (the Argyle Declaration) that was written in less than a day (how was that even possible?!) despite its long-term significance for us; and so forth.
At the same time, we seem to have a low rate of time preference, or great patience for other things. The one that irks me most is that we seem happy to wait for the oil to run out to have a modern, world-class education system. That system, which would give us the (human) capital we’d need to replace our used-up natural resources, would yield long-term returns; but we must start today, not tomorrow. If anything at all, we must be impatient about having a world-class education system. It cannot be just about online programmes and school buildings; it cannot come with less accountability, with the discarding of monitoring systems, or reduced loads, when in fact, we need more of these very things. We need an education system that prepares us for a future in which our young people will be adults in a very different world. We need our young people to be inquisitive and empowered, to be equipped with intellectual daring, and with appropriate knowledge, values and vision to have agency, as individuals and collectively as a nation, in that future. We need to teach differently, we need to learn differently, for a future that would be very different from our past.
As the saying goes, patience is virtue. It would allow us to develop our human capital, our institutions, and even our social capital. But if our focus is primarily on getting short-term benefits from the high-rate-of-time preference-activities mentioned above, we will never get around starting a revolution in our education and other systems. Without doubt, there is one Guyana where the impatient congregate to get short term benefits, while, as in Naipaul’s “Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro,” there is another Guyana that would prefer longer-term benefits. The one Guyana that gets its way is able to do so because power is on its side, and conversely, it flocks the corridors of power. The rest of us, and those in particular who must be patient, might be out in the streets.
Sincerely,
Thomas B. Singh
