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Budget 2025 rife with slush funds for elections campaign
—-Volda Lawrence
Kaieteur News-With $2.3B in this year’s Budget allocated under broad headings, Opposition Member of Parliament (MP), Volda Lawrence is of the view that this year’s fiscal plan is rife with slush funds.
Table shared by MP Lawrence indicating the increase in broad line items in specific Ministries
She described the 2025 Budget as an elections campaign fund, lacking crucial measures to diversify the economy. During her contribution on Thursday to the budget debates, Lawrence a former Health Minister quoted a scripture from the Bible for MPs, Matthew 13:25 which says “but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.” Using this as the foundation of her speech, the Opposition Parliamentarian pointed out, “A perusal of the Estimates begs more question of this 2025 budget figures. Looking at two subheads- ‘Other Goods & Services’ and ‘Other Operating Costs’ the line items 6284 Others and 6294 respectively tell a grim story about Budget 2025.”
Opposition MP, Volda Lawrence
Elaborating on her findings, she said that under the Ministry of Education programme 402, an increase of $321M is observed, followed by a whopping $1B increase for programme 405. Additionally, Lawrence told the National Assembly that the Ministry of Local Government marked a $300M increase under programme 131.
To this end, the MP reasoned, “Mr. Speaker, what are these ministries doing to cause an increase under these broad line items of over $2.3 billion?”
“Guyanese people need to wake up; wake up fellow Guyanese, we are being attacked from within. Here is my proof Mr. Speaker; this budget is an elections campaign fund. What more evidence is needed? Mr. Speaker, this budget is rife with slush funds. Dollars for Elections, for Campaigning,” Lawrence argued.
Meanwhile, in turning her attention to diversification of the economy, MP Lawrence suggested that one way in which Guyana can have sustainable growth and reduce its dependence on the oil and gas sector is through value added products.
She was keen to note that this view is also shared by President Irfaan Ali and Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh. Be that as it may, she said there is a lack of investment by government towards bold steps to grow this sector.
Lawrence explained, “I refer to financing, concessions for those who wish to invest in cosmetics, rice base products – noodles, snacks or flour; floor tiles from our wood, or various types of tiles from our clay or aluminum just to name a few.” The MP noted that while Minister Singh highlighted growth in the manufacturing sector by 13% in 2024 and other manufacturing increased by 15.7%, this growth was driven by non-metallic and fabricated metal products linked to the petroleum industry.
She went on to point out that $527.4 M$ was pumped into the agro-processing sector in 2024, however, Guyanese are not aware of the total value of the products processed and sold both locally and overseas. Furthermore, the former Minister reminded that Dr. Singh in 2024 told the House that there were two large investments totaling 250,000 hectares for production and value added in the forestry sector, yet in the 2025 Budget there was no mention of this “great investment”.
(Budget 2025 rife with slush funds for elections campaign)
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