Latest update May 13th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 22, 2022 Letters
Dear Editor,
The problem with numbers is they are several of them. Numbers can say so much, conceal still more. They also can mean different things to different people, some with different contexts; some with different objectives, including either axes to grind, or points to prove or just for the hell of them. As I view numbers, a little bit of all of those, sometimes a considerable amount, seeps into them, and reveals one story, while leaving out others.
The current word is that GY$200B from this year’s national budget has been set aside, paid out, delivered, in one way or another, to the Guyanese people. A third of any national budget claimed to be people-oriented is a significant percentage, and one which should come in for the highest praise. Because directly or indirectly GY$200 billion, or 33%, for the people is a figure that is hard to challenge, harder to beat. To make matters even better, GY$200 billion is not a number plucked out of the air, but one that has the factual and complete accuracy about it, on the face of it. There is a certain powerful, compelling logic about 33% and GY$200 billion.
Having said that, I now assert that the devil is in the details, or as I prefer to say in this way: what is it that lies behind the kimono? Where did that GY$200 billion go? More pointedly, who were/are the prime beneficiaries or recipients of that pot of cash? Take that GY$200 billion and divide it by 750,000 (or something around that) and we are talking about a couple hundred thousand dollars ending up in the hands, in some manner, of each and every Guyanese citizen. That’s serious money. Speaking for myself, I will gladly take it, so rich it is. This is the magic and mystery of averages. It is also part of the myth of numbers, statistics, and so forth: they only tell part of the story, and it is usually what is convenient to the storyteller, whoever he or she is, whatever the intent.
Editor, in essence what I am saying is that totals are a pleasing, comforting blanket, which can be massaged into any kind of smoothness desired. While that most-likely-to-succeed ‘averages’ serve as the finest gloss for the skews that they dress-up, disguise, sometimes inadvertently discard. On the one hand, there is the tiny minority in the 750,000 population, who would have absorbed and gobbled up a most significant fraction of that GY$200 billion from the 2022 budget. I have called that enriched group the less than 1% people in Guyana. They go by the names of entrepreneurs, investors, businesspeople, private sector, and so on; and when I say private sector, the distinction must be made between the woman vendor at the corner, versus the man operating at the heights in some air-conditioned tower (or shadows). It would be interesting for Guyana to learn of the approximate percentage of the 33% of the 2022 budget that was aimed at them primarily, and sucked up by them consistently.
On the other hand, there is the other side of what I am labeling skew: it is of the multitude of citizens compelled mathematically, but unknowingly, into a basket christened the “average” which possesses its own profound truths. I suppose that it could be argued that, were it not for the government’s provisions in 2022, each Guyanese would have been an additional GY$200,000 plus out of pocket, or in debt. But they are not, thanks to their equal portion of the average, and thanks to a benevolent government. In the counter, I keep on insisting, contend, that a great deal of that GY$200 billion ended up with Guyanese who have never stopped receiving this year: gold, construction, exemptions, and those other segments of the populations specially favored with actual cash in hand. Or the first among equals, such as fishers and farmers and sugar. I have one last point to share. I am going to accept that almost 6% official inflation rate, but on one condition. If any citizen of this rich land, could share with me that his or her bill for food essentials and transportation and medicine, went up by $5 for every existing $100 in price for a related item, then I want to be their best friend. I would be utterly selfish and seek to be their only friend, so I can capitalize on that most welcomed reality.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
Listen how to run an oil country
May 13, 2024
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