A great proportion of remittances do not remain within our economy

DEAR EDITOR,
Ms. Daly’s (Kaieteur News 23rd July) continual missing the boat on the remittances (the transfer of money by a foreign worker to his home country) debate is fine with me.
It allows me to repeat the points I am trying to bring the public’s attention to. As usual, Ms. Daly does not quote where, according to her, I view remittances as a competing financial source, instead of a complementary financial source.
Remittances no doubt are a crucial source of foreign exchange. However, much of this is spent pretty much as fast as it comes in on our imports of consumer goods, fuels and lubricants.
In addition, with practically each plane that departs CJIA, Timehri, we lose more of our skills and knowledge to other nations.
These facts (as supported by Government figures), simply mean that a great proportion of remittances do not remain within our economy (and therefore cannot be spent and re-spent in any significant manner), nor is there sufficient skills and knowledge to utilise the remainder productively (further reducing the ability to spend and re-spend).
Therefore, the argument is remittances, within our present state of affairs, serve mainly to prop up our expenditure.
This expenditure also includes conspicuous consumption (show-off spending on overseas trips, fancy cars, brand name clothing, etc.) which not only is wasteful, but can have negative social impacts as well.
For this situation to change, our economy must undergo transformation (Dr. Tarron Khemraj, SN Column 22nd July).
This transformation is not only necessary for remittances to play a more meaningful role in Guyana’s development, but also in the face of reduced remittances – forecast to drop by almost 7% for 2009 according to the World Bank (SN, July 15th).
Some estimates put remittances to Guyana at 40% of our GDP (the standard measure of the size of the economy), and this reduction could therefore have a significant negative impact.
Ms. Daly keeps dodging these points, and as a member of the Ghost-writers Club (GC), her missives are taken even less seriously.
My offering to meet with ‘her’ was only an effort to lend credibility to ‘her’ and would have led to an actual debate instead of the present bob-and-weave tactics. These tactics though, are working in my favour.
Gerhard Ramsaroop