– Jagdeo

THE People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) will consider targeted cash transfers to Guyanese from the oil and gas revenues, according to the party’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo.

“The PPP has to keep its mind open to any method that would reduce poverty, get more jobs to people, get more children to school, and getting the best quality education and healthcare, and in our manifesto we are going to be talking about conditional and targeted transfers to vulnerable groups right at the beginning,” Jagdeo said on Thursday at his weekly press conference.

He explained that single parents, the elderly and children, will be priority in such a cash transfer in a sustainable economy.

In underscoring how other countries do such, Jagdeo said that in Finland, a universal basic income helped with employment, reduce crime and target the elimination of poverty.
“This result has been mixed based on universal basic income. Alaska does this… every year people receive a cheque from a sum of money from a fund that they have because they produce oil, the things is that the sum varies, so if oil prices are high they may get a little more, and then it can go as low as US$700 a year if oil prices are low,” Jagdeo explained.
Alaska is a state in the US. “So they can spend as much US dollars as they wish without it having the effect of the Dutch disease and the biggest concern from developing countries is the change in relative prices because if you spend too much US$ in the economy the local currency appreciates and it kills off the productive sectors,” he said.

As such, Jagdeo said the macroeconomic impact on a smaller country is not the same.
“Brazil did some of this, they said poor families will get a cheque from the government, but only poor families, not everyone. The obligation that you have after receipt of the cheques is that the children must attend school,” he said.

He continued, “In Guyana without oil money coming in we started to introduce a more targeted approach that is where we said that the $10,000 was for the school children. This would have grown every year up to a maximum of $50,000 per child and that was even without oil money.”

The idea of direct cash transfers from the oil revenues to citizens was first put forward by Economist, Professor Clive Thomas, an executive member of the Working People’s Alliance.
However, Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. Karen Cummings, recently told a news conference that the government is not immediately looking to give Guyanese handouts from the oil proceeds.

In fact, she made it clear that the government prefers to invest in education.