Squander mania parading as economic acumen

To hear of the country not being in a position to determine the benefits to its people from the billions of dollars in concessions to foreign investors is outrageous. Upfront, the Guyanese people must know who really is in charge of this country’s business. Just imagine how we are continuing to look in the eyes of our regional neighbours twenty-two years after removing ourselves from the economic adventurism of the so-called undemocratic regime. Today the people are worse off when it comes to transparency in the conduct of their business. At least in the “pre-democracy era” the people were aware of what was being done in their name even if they disagreed with the conceptual underpinnings. Today the young people with no experiential reference to those times are faced with a government that very much operates like a runaway train in the way this country’s finances are being mis-spent, misappropriated and misaligned, all with the intent of preserving power at any cost. If we were to examine a few of the more obvious signs of economic incoherence – for want of a better term, the younger Guyanese see foreign companies tying their investments to a conditionality that in less docile societies would be unheard of not to mention them being unpalatable. How can a government accept a condition which demands that only nationals from the investor home country will be employed when thousands of persons remain unemployed? Which sane administration allows its hands to be tied by an agreement which says that only purchases from the investor country are permissible in furtherance of investor profitability? What are we saying to our people when we speak of the national patrimony being for the benefit of all Guyanese? To hear the reasons proffered by the Guyana Office for Investment (GOINVEST) why that entity is not in a position to determine the benefits of myriad duty-free concessions to a foreign company is like observing a badly written Z-grade attempt at excusing the inexcusable. This scenario begs the question whether there is collaboration among state agencies charged with monitoring the related people-development benefits against dollar value of concessions granted by the state at the expense of the people’s socio-economic quality of life?. It may not be an unkind thought if one were to surmise that the principal beneficiaries in all of these shenanigans have been government ministers. To read of luxury vehicles being imported by this company should surely send the more enterprising investigative journalist probing the final destination of these and other duty-free facilities. But just as importantly the question that stares us in the face is “what have our elected representatives in Parliament been doing while all of this has been going on?” There seems to be no coordinated approach to addressing anomalies in the economic sphere. Except for a few knowledgeable voices blowing the whistle as it were, there is no sign that any urgency informs political strategy of the political opposition. Citizens are not provided the level of comfort that the economic experts are on their toes prior to these potentially disastrous investor undertakings in the extractive sectors of this country. People are not comfortable with the almost obscene forging ahead by government to conclude what are unarguably sweetheart deals. But sweetheart deals for whose benefit? In a previous column we pointed to the level of material wealth that has now become commonplace in the possession of senior government persons compared to what they owned before their ascension to high office. What should be of deep concern to all is the signal those realities are sending to the young impressionable minds in our midst. The teen growing up in marginalised communities across this nation is daily confronted by evidence of squander mania parading as economic acumen alongside his/her depressed socio-economic circumstances. The reasons floated for not having local government polls is another of the frustrations that all Guyanese deserve to be freed from. They see the prostitution of professionalism in pursuit of politically correct statements which disregard the conditions that the people are perpetually forced to endure. Yet we have expectations that they will ignore those realities and persevere in the face of insuperable odds to become productive men and women of tomorrow.