Numbers, what about people?  

Sep 04, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers are maintaining its breakneck pace since oil was first discovered here.  Oil production has been the steroids that power the relentless march of GDP.  The mid-year report from the Bank of Guyana just confirmed this: GDP was a remarkable 49.7% mid-2024.  Despite a few key sectors recording declines, and a few advancing, the first half GDP for this year was still a rich ground 49.7%.  With a whopper of a number like that, the reasonable expectation is that the rising local GDP tide would lift all boats in the local environment.  That is, as GDP goes, so would Guyanese.

A GDP increase of 10%, or high single digits, is considered healthy, one that should mean much for the population, with benefits flowing.  The number lifts citizens, as in the tangibles, they are in a better position to grasp.  More jobs and better paying ones stand as one outcome of an increasing GDP.  There have been those in some sectors, with construction and its supporting tentacles providing visible evidence.  But where are the rest of Guyanese in this era of great and greater GDP numbers?  What has been their lot, a good many in the population, amid the dizzying array of GDP numbers since the contributions of oil to the local economy?  In the middle of rich GDP numbers, there is the grimness of many Guyanese who are forced to live on a shoestring that strips them of their dignity and makes a mockery of that thrilling description: the richest people in the world, using those same GDP numbers.  When the ordinary people in Guyana cannot afford the basics of a healthy existence, most of all food essentials, then the power and beauty of 30 plus percent and almost 50 percent GDP in different intervals becomes nothing but a taunt and an insult.

The PPPC Government and its leading policy men have a standard line.  There is great concern and watchful vigilance on that monster called inflation, i.e., rising prices.  Notwithstanding what could be rightly termed a galloping GDP reality, the government claims with a bland face that it has succeeded through skillful efforts at keeping inflation under control.  GDP is more than 20%, more than 30%, and more than 40%, but miracle of miracles, fears of the economy overheating are nowhere in sight, because the PPP/C Government has been wise in its policies and the numbers are there to prove so.  If the government is to be taken seriously, and as being honest with its statistics, that has been its insistent story.  However, according to those who are the best judges of where prices are (amidst these fabulous GDP numbers), rising prices have them in a stranglehold that grows tighter with each passing week.  While GDP is rising and rising in an endless spiral, and government policymakers are busy celebrating and congratulating themselves, the people are struggling to put food on the table and feed their children.  This is the unsparing irony of Guyana under a PPP/C Government that is quick to point out about how much it cares.  The GDP numbers are statistically rich, but there are growing numbers of Guyanese who are food and existence poor. Considering the GDP riches, the government should have been extending a helping hand more freely to the Guyanese not among its chosen.  The government prefers to be stingy and angry when called to account for the disparity.

Sugar has been failing abysmally but has been the beneficiary of billions in ongoing subsidies, and yet its output is down by 60% in the first half of 2024.  Gold is down and so is bauxite, while rice is up, with fishing recording healthy gains.  There is this flush of numbers in one of the most talked about countries globally.  Yet there are thousands upon thousands of Guyanese who are asking themselves how is it that they are not among those sharing in the local richness.  The government reminds everyone about how much it has done.  It is better advised to focus on what it has not done, where it has not gone, and why so many Guyanese are where they are in this period of great national numbers.

• Bank of Guyana, ENVIRONMENT, Evidence, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population