…Jordan points to rollover projects, unpreparedness of some agencies

By Zena Henry

THE 2017 National Budget is set to be tabled in the National Assembly in early December, some three months from now; and officials are racing against time to increase the level of spending for this year’s estimates.But yesterday, Finance Minister Winston Jordan confirmed that, almost nine months into the year, less than 50 per cent of the 2016 National Budget has thus far been spent. Describing the scenario as “unfavourable”, Jordan explained that Government’s continuous battle with existing items has hindered the smooth functioning of many agencies.

“By the half-year, we recognised that we needed to reshuffle programmes and put more resources into what we are doing,” Minister Jordan explained. He said that among the issues “are many projects that have clogged up the system.” He pointed to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport expansion project, which he said has been restarted, and detailed that this required the necessary evaluation and other assessments, which consumed some time. “These are just projects that we have to get out of the way before we can actually start our stuff,” the minister explained.

He said that the need to speed up some processes and strengthen agencies has been recognised. “For instance, we are already speeding up the process with the Public Tender Board. We are strengthening agencies and evaluating implementation processes,” he explained.

Among other considerations contributing to failure of the system, the Finance Minister said, was “so-called interference”, which is being removed. He singled out Region Six to state that while months of controversy had existed there, and blame for sloth had been thrown on the Regional Executive Officer (REO), the failure has been recognized as having to do with slow implementation systems in the region.

Minister Jordan also believes that some agencies “may have been caught off-guard with an early 2016 Budget.” He opined that some agencies were “so accustomed to being relaxed and lackadaisical (in their approach to getting things done) that they were surprised by the early budget and were unable to get their footing.”

Months past Government’s first year in office, its officials are still trying to fix a lot of what is wrong with the system it inherited from the previous Administration. Minister Jordan declared: “Yes, it is embarrassing” to have spent such a meagre percentage of what has been budgeted for development so far into the year. However, he said increases in public sector wages, granted within the last couple of days, should take the Government a further $50B into the budget.

New measures put in place by Cabinet are also expected to see agencies spending more of their allocated budget fees, he said.

Minister Jordan is hoping that a large sum from the 2016 budget will not have to be returned to the state purse, as more can be done to boost the economy.

With the objective to build a platform to put the economy on a higher growth path to enable the “Good Life”, the Government, on January 29 this year, presented a $230B budget that projected the economy would grow by 4.4 per cent.

The Administration had, last year, forecasted a 3.4 per cent economic growth, but fell short of that target, registering a growth of three per cent. Presenting his second budget, themed “Stimulating Growth, Restoring Confidence: The Good Life Beckons”, Jordan had told the House that 2015 was perhaps the most challenging year yet. “All of the country’s key industries: sugar, rice, bauxite, gold forestry, had found themselves in various states of distress. Even remittances, which have contributed significantly to income, consumption, investment and employment; and upon which so many of our people depend, was a victim of the slowdown in the world economy,” he had said then.

Minister Jordan contends that Guyana’s excessive reliance on the foregoing generators of foreign exchange will continue to expose the economy to volatile external developments. “It is a tribute to this young Government’s prudent management of the economy — including timely policy interventions — that the economy’s growth trajectory continued; that there were no reported job losses; and, as was evident in the last two months of 2015, the business community’s confidence had been restored,” Jordan had said then, as he had predicted that 2016 would be a year of recovery, a platform to put the economy on a higher growth path to realise the “good life”.

In his mid-year review, Jordan had said that the economy was buoyed by a sterling performance in the mining sector, and that the local economy had recorded a 2% growth over the past six months, and was expected to post a growth rate of approximately 4% at the end of the year, despite low returns in rice and sugar.

The Finance Minister has said he is pleased with the overall performance of the sectors during 2016, hailing the performance of the mining and quarrying sector as “very good”, while noting that economic growth in the first half of the year had reached two per cent, substantially above the 0.9 per cent (revised from 0.7 per cent) growth rate achieved during the same period last year.

“The performance of the economy in the first half (of the year) was buoyed by growth in the mining sector, particularly as a result of increased production of gold, as well as growth in some of the services sector,” the Mid-Year Report stated. Production in the gold industry reached 322,493 ounces during the first half of 2016, an increase of 94.3 per cent over the same period last year.

It is believed that “improved oversight of concessions to the sector was among factors that contributed to an increase in output,” Minister Jordan has said.