Aligning National Development

RECENT STATE visits to Guyana by the Kuwaiti Prime Minister, the Venezuelan President, the SEBRAE trade mission from Brazil and the trade agreements arising from those visits; the newly finished Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) corporate headquarters and expansion by other Banks have all charged the air with a sense of energy and movement. 

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As Guyana works to break the poverty cycle and move ahead, a reduction in distraction and disruption from partisan political infighting and brinksmanship, beyond levels necessary for participative democratic national governance, would certainly be beneficial to the national development thrust.

In addition to a busy development agenda,   the country is faced with an array of common external and internal challenges, in the likes of: AIDS; drainage, irrigation and sea defences; violent crime, safety, security and policing; territorial claims, sanitation and health care; education; jobs and employment; debt management; immigration and the brain drain; transhipment of drugs; poverty; environmental concerns; fluctuating commodity prices; loss of sugar subsidies; high fuel costs; foreign competition; underground economy; telecom monopoly; lack of direct air flights – the list of issues of large and small facing the nation is demanding.

The country’s performance in the midst of these challenges is monitored by a number of surveys that are reported in the media.  Some do a valuable service of benchmarking Guyana against its peer group, giving independent corroboration of areas where the country has excelled and highlighting areas in need of serious attention.

Others however, like the infamous right-wing Heritage Foundation survey which was published a couple of months ago, are anything but unbiased and agenda-free.  In the guise of objective analysis, excerpts of pot-shots at Guyana from the Heritage Foundation were picked up and carried unquestioningly – even gleefully by some electronic and print media.  

The irony is that much of the origins of Guyana’s half century of struggles can in fact be attributed to right-wing agendas of a different period but not unlike those of the Heritage Foundation, as declassified intelligence documents confirm.

People hardly need now to be persuaded by the very harbingers of derailment in Guyana that the country has been set back and continues to endure hardship.  Nor would you expect that local media, which one would assume to hold the Guyana’s interest high, would unqualifyingly parrot the prognostications of any entity whose agenda is adverse to those interests.

The intent here, however, is not to dwell on this, but to instead try to capture a bit of the essence of what Guyana is doing to dig itself out of a deep hole.  The roadmap of the strategic thinking for this is the 2001-2010 National Development Strategy (NDS), which was and continues to be an ambitious program with the objective of firmly placing Guyana back on a path of sustainable political, social and economic development.

The chart above attempts to present a high-level overview of the strategy and the dynamic interactions between its different elements which have been grouped under four broad but mutually interdependent categories: individual development in Society; Financial Stewardship; Government Policy & Procedures; and Infrastructure & Capacity Building.

The strategy’s big picture in a nutshell, as the chart tries to capture, is to deploy Financial Stewardship to drive broad economic growth that is widely distributed in Society among the regions and throughout the population from the coast to the hinterland, leading to widespread poverty reduction, which in turn fosters greater social and geographic unity. 

It calls for Participatory and Transparent Governance (such as the initiative to have MP’s declare their assets), Policies and Processes which facilitates effective Financial Stewardship (the mandate for GO-Invest, for example), which would in turn drives lynchpin Infrastructure improvements and allows Capacity Building.

All-important Infrastructure improvements spur economic activity that spreads through the communities which enjoy better health care and housing availability.  Better Financial Stewardship results in more room to fund social programs – and so on with interdependent developments in each quadrant feeding other areas which in turn contribute their own supporting synergies.

Social and physical unification is furthered by infrastructure initiatives like the east coast highway, the Berbice Bridge and the Lethem Road which allow people to get from one region to another with greater ease and breaks down at least some of the physical causes of social isolation. 

Poverty reduction is a multidimensional phenomenon involving not only direct cash income but also access to things like health care, education, clean drinking water, housing and the likes.  Progress can be seen in all these areas with recent accreditation of the medical school at UG; the new hospital in Berbice; health clinics throughout the country; training of Guyanese doctors with assistance from Cuba; the implementation of universal education; merging of the water authority under the umbrella of the Ministry of Housing and the distribution of housing lots.   

Still, it’s probably fair to say that the level of poverty reduction is not as great as had been hoped despite massive social program spending.  And a number of important objectives like the deep water harbour and surfacing of key roads to all weather standards are still on the drawing board.

But significant hard won gains have been accomplished with more to come if Guyana can stay on the road with the comprehensive strategic thinking behind the plan remaining a viable base for a blueprint going forward.  Some elements of the NDS have matured into full programs in their own rights.  For example, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Strategy has been formalized and the Tourism Development Program was initiated to expand Guyana’s Amazon eco-tourism niche and to enable Guyanese at home and abroad to see more of the country.  

Both of the above were given new impetus through the National Competitiveness Strategy (NCS), which was developed as an adjunct to the NDS to address newer competitive challenges, trade liberalization, technology shifts, and the need to expand the manufacturing sector.

The NCS also identified the need for the market-leading Agricultural Diversification Strategy, which is moving further into non-traditional areas and making big changes in the sugar and rice industries.

The sum of all these and many other initiatives saw Guyana’s economy grow by 3.3% in 2009 while the world economy contracted in the range of -2%.  In the words of the World Economic Forum (WEF), this was achieved, “In the midst of a major external shock on export demand and financing availability, brought about by the current global economic crisis and lower commodity prices.”

This is encouraging not only because the growth was achieved during a downturn in the world economy, but also because GDP is a lagging indicator.  While GDP growth reflects some prior infrastructure improvements, it is yet to fully reflect the results of significant new developments such as the Takatu Bridge and the Berbice River Bridge with other projects like the Amelia Falls hydro development and fibre optic line in the offing.

Furthermore, the growth was achieved on the heels of the worst natural disaster to befall Guyana – the rainfalls and floods of 2004/2005 that resulted in damage of some $200 to $300 million and the displacement of some 70,000 households

The foregoing is by no mea
ns an exhaustive list (not mentioned, for example, is the extractive industry and investments by Bosai, Rusal and others), nor does it factor in the boost to the national psyche from things like the new stadium at Providence, the leadership role on the world stage that the country plays in environmental matters, growth and stability in the financial sector, new hotels, broadening bilateral relations with countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Kuwait, China, India, Cuba, and others, or the humanitarian response by Guyanese to Haiti.  But it does indicate that the often talked about potential of the country can become a more lasting reality if the country’s energies are aligned for the common good. 

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