THE budget 2018 debate begins today and Prime Minister and Leader of the House, Moses Nagamootoo, has called for there to be bi-partisan cooperation in the shaping of the nation’s development and social agenda.

In his weekly column, “My turn”, published in the Sunday edition of the Guyana Chronicle, under the heading, “Different strategy in changing times”, the prime minister said the $267B budget presented by Finance Minister Winston Jordan last Monday is not only bigger than previous budgets, but has a “bottom-up framework, with something for everyone, starting from the grassroots.”

While noting what he described as “popular acceptance” for the budget, he noted too the criticisms of the parliamentary opposition, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
“The latter would belly-ache over what the budget does not include. However, it serves no useful purpose for an opposition to just make a morbid assessment of the budget and try to sell pie-in-the-sky prescriptions. A different strategy is needed for the changing times,” he stated.

And according to the prime minister, there is a great need for positive politics.
“We need positive politics where the opposition would participate in, and not boycott, pre-budget consultations,” while noting that with the advent of an oil-and-gas economy, the current -day situation demands all-inclusive, national governance and not “narrow, ethnic-driven agendas.”
Notwithstanding his desire, he does not believe that the opposition would participate; at least, not anytime soon.

“It needs a visionary leader who would look towards the future and not be pre-occupied with building ethnic fences to pre-empt or prevent possible prosecution for past wrongs. The better interests of the constituents of the opposition require engagement, not withdrawal.”
The prime minister said with the start of the budget debates today, citizens would expect civilised and constructive exchanges not only criticisms, castigation and condemnation, “but practical suggestions and proposals on how our united country could move forward, faster.”

He posited that the “constructive nationalist approach becomes more appealing because several of the usual political whipping boys will not be available this time around,” while pointing to the Value Added Tax (VAT) on private education, or concessions to the mining, forestry and transportation sectors.

LONE WHIPPING BOY
“These have been granted. And disclosures of government’s contract with oil-and-gas investors have been assured, which have blown away a whole lot of anticipated noises in the House,” he stated, pointing to the sugar industry as the lone “whipping boy.”
“There would be plenty crocodile tears from the opposition mourners who themselves had bankrupted the industry and broke its back with a debt of $85 billion.” The chief pallbearer had predicted that “without Skeldon, sugar is dead.

“He then poured, like water on a duck’s back, $50B ostensibly to modernise the Skeldon factory, but Guyanese did not get as much as a quack from that duck,” the prime minister stated in his column.
He reminded that in order to keep sugar alive, it was his administration over the last 30 months that rolled out $31B to GuySuCo which, additionally, raked in billions from sale of sugar lands.

Another $6B will be advanced to help the sugar company regularise the operations of three factories on five cane-producing estates.
Nagamootoo is of the strong opinion that sugar will not fail if the industry is streamlined to get the best from both fields and factories, and peasant cane farmers and sugar workers are brought into the production chain.

“I am of the view still that former cane-cutters should be given redundant land to cultivate cash crops or manage fish farms. Today, I am lighting a candle of hope for sugar workers who would opt for self-employment,” he said, calling for collaboration and cooperation.
That aside, the prime minister reckons that without being able to use sugar workers as their whipping boys, the opposition’s views on the 2018 budget would be “flat and dry.”
“…except for the eventual retreat, withdraw and walkout!” he declared.