People know the truth and people are not fooled. Guyanese people are gracious and forgiving people and tend to move on. But this does not mean and should never be viewed as if people forget. These truths about the Guyanese people seem to elude our critics. They are so desperate in their efforts to fool people and in their desperation they even have begun to believe their lies. The truth of Guyana’s development in the last two decades have become inconvenient truths for these critics and all they have succeeded in doing is to expose the vile purpose of their efforts to disseminate lies and misrepresentation.
I reiterate today some truths, inconvenient though they might be to Christopher Ram, Carl Greenidge, APNU, AFC and other critics.

1. Guyana’s debt was more than $US2.1B in 1992 and virtually all of these loans were accumulated during the PNC’s abysmal tenure in office. A $US60M loan in 1964 grew to about $US1.5B in 1985 and to $US2.1B in 1992. By 1992, Guyana’s international debt was more than 750% of Guyana’s GDP and servicing this loan consumed 94% of our revenues in 1992. This essentially meant we were bankrupt, with little or no financial resources to build our infrastructure and provide services to our people. Guyana was an IMF “basket” case, a country that was among the most indebted on earth, and which was unable any longer to manage its debt. The PNC mortgaged Guyana and were in a “default” position in 1992. If it were an ordinary family, the house would have been taken over by the bank.  Indeed, the IMF took over the country.

2. The PPP/C managed the debt crisis expertly and few countries can match the success of Guyana in dealing with their debt crisis. Indeed, we managed through astute negotiation to obtain debt “forgiveness”, paid off more than $US1B and, even though we had to continue borrowing to sustain the massive infrastructure and economic development programmes, managed to keep our international debt at $US1B. Our loan profile today represents less than 45% of GDP and servicing the debt consumes about 4% of our revenues, a macro-economic position better than all Caribbean countries today and better than the US. Few countries, if any, can claim greater success in dealing with the debt crisis as Guyana can claim. This is a Guyana success story and the PPP/C Government can proudly refer to its successful management of the debt crisis which drove Guyana from a position of one of the most advanced economy in the Caribbean in the 1960s to the poorest country in the hemisphere by 1992. President Bharrat Jagdeo stands tall and must be given due credit for stewarding our country from a bankrupt state to one which today is the CARICOM country with the most stable economy and the economy which today is the only one being able to withstand the negative impacts of the global financial and economic crises. From a “basket” case in 1992, we have emerged fulfilling our promise as the “bread basket” of the Caribbean.

3. Guyana became the poorest country, even behind Haiti, in the Western Hemisphere by 1992. From a base of over $US300 in 1964, our economy (GDP) shrunk under the PNC to just about $US250 in 1992. In 2010, the GDP of Guyana had grown to almost $US2,600. The truth is that in virtually every year in the 1980s, our economy shrunk and Guyana experienced negative growth. The truth is every year in the last five years, Guyana has experienced growth and is the only country in the “big four” in CARICOM that can make this claim. The truth also is that when we take the 19 years in which the PPP/C Government has managed our economy, there has been growth in 15 of those 19 years and the years without growth were those years when we suffered from the big flood and  El Nino and La Nina years. The truth is also in the last 20 years of the PNC Government, there were negative growth rates in most of those years.

4. Inflation and interest rates have been under control throughout our tenure. Inflation rates which lead to a lowering of our purchasing power, more costly goods and diminishing the worth of people’s wages, has been under control and in single digits every year under the PPP/C Government. In the first half of 2011,the inflation rate was under 4%. Under the PNC’s tenure, the inflation rate was sky-rocket high, increasing from about 29% in 1987 to more than 100% by 1991.

5. Mortgage rates which today vary from between 4.5% to about 10% (2011) under the PPP/C Government and virtually every Guyanese today could easily and affordably obtain such home mortgages used to be almost 40% under the PNC Government and only the super rich used to obtain such home mortgages. Business loans were essentially impossible to obtain before 1992 under the PNC because of limited availability and the almost 40% interest rates. But the worst part of the PNC story is that many who took those loans never paid it back. Today, the banking system has made vast sums of money available for local entrepreneurs and at interest rates which are affordable at about 12%.

6. The most shameful part of the PNC’s story is the disgraceful loss of worth of wages and salaries under the PNC. By 1992, minimum salary was about $US15 per month, compared to about $US200 today. At the GS 1 level, a public servant was earning $4,000 a month and at the GS14 level salaries were about $18,000 per month in 1992. Today, GS 1 level earns about $40,000 (1,000% increase) and GS 14 about $500,000 (almost 3,000% increase). The public service wage bill in 1992 was $3.3B compared to $32B (1,000% increase) in 2010. In 1992, the income tax threshold was $6,000 and this has increased to $40,000 per month in 2011.

7. The truth is that our major highways and main roadways are far more extensive and of superior standard than we inherited in 1992 when virtually every highway was in a state of collapse. We have built extensive new roadways linking our hinterland communities and linking the hinterland regions to our coastal regions. We have removed “remoteness” as a description for many hinterland communities. The development of our highways and major roadways represents an unfinished developmental agenda and the present efforts to expand the highways linking Georgetown to Berbice and the International Airport to four-lane highways and upgrading major roadways such as the Lethem to Linden, Canje and Black Bush, Mabaruma to Yarakita, Port Kaituma to Buckhall, the Ituni Road, etc. are examples of how dramatic the transformation has been of our highways and major roadways under the PPP/C Government.

8. Our river transport system is developing gradually. By stabilizing the Demerara Harbour Bridge which was in a nightmarish condition in 1992, building the Berbice, Mahaicony and Mahaica  Rivers Bridges and hundreds of other bridges along our highways and improving our ferry systems, the PPP/C Government has improved river transportation by leaps and bounds.

9. The Cheddi Jagan International Airport and the Ogle Aerodrome are modern facilities that rank as among the best in CARICOM within their categories. These stand as outstanding achievements of the PPP/C Government, far from the disgrace these facilities stood out as in 1992.

10. Our housing and water programmes stand out as major success stories and only the foolish and shameless will try to compare what we have achieved in housing and water with the dismal efforts of the PNC Government. When it comes to housing and water, the PNC quite simply must hang their heads in shame. Potable water is reaching greater than 90% of the population today, compared to less than 40% in 1992. From less than 10% of the population in 1992, today more than 45% of our people have reliable access to treated water. We have forever removed the woeful spectacle of people carting water, fetching water on their heads and the long lines of people walking along our roadways, sometimes for miles, to obtain potable water. We have removed the spectacle of people wading in the trenches and canals to bathe and to wash clothes.

11. Not even the blind can fail to acknowledge the tremendous improvement and modernization of our schools, hospitals and health centres. Every school, every health centre and every hospital was in such dilapidated and non-functional state that the education and health status of our nation were deplorable. Most of our hospitals, health centres and schools have been reconstructed and rehabilitated and we have built new ones in areas that never had any.
I wanted merely to reiterate some truths that critics like Ram, Greenidge and others in APNU and the AFC find inconvenient. Newspapers have limited space and I cannot in one presentation list our development as a country. But these are truths that our critics can twist in all forms, but they cannot wipe them out. The truth is, people can see these development initiatives and programmes and feel them. No matter how much they try to misrepresent and misinterpret these successes, the people will not be fooled. These are the facts; they are the truth, no matter how inconvenient they might be for our critics.