NATURAL RESOURCES MINISTER, Vickram Bharrat, in his inaugural presentation at the Budget 2020 debate, called out the Opposition for its contradiction in referring to the year’s financial plan as “copycat budget”.

He said that the Opposition seems to be merely following through with their plans to find fault with the budget, when the financial plans set out to correct the long list of its mismanagement and malpractice.

Giving examples of such cases, he turned to his area of specialty, natural resources.

“Even though the APNU preached about oil and gas and first oil for so many years, there was a policy that was more targeted to benefitting the companies and not the locals. But we intend to ensure that we have a strong local content policy followed by regulatory framework so that our locals can enjoy the benefits of our oil and gas sector,” Minister Bharrat said.

He stressed that budget 2020 is not a pro-private sector budget as the Opposition has dubbed it, but it is a people’s budget which, through the private sector and other sectors, will provide more working opportunities for Guyanese.

Bharrat also examined the area of public health. He said that while the Opposition chose to politicise the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the PPP/C that increased testing from an average of 31 tests per day to almost 300.

Added to this, he said that a month ago there were only three persons trained to conduct COVID tests but the PPP/C has now trained over 40 persons to ramp up testing.

On the topic of education, he criticised the APNU+AFC’s previous 5Bs project, which he said pales in comparison to the return of the PPP/C’s cash grant and its increase to $15,000.

He told the House: “The 5 Bs programme was benefitting maybe 10,000 children in this country. You add up the amount of seats in each David Granger bus, you add up the seats in every boat that you distribute, you add up how many bicycles you distribute and it wouldn’t reach 10,000. If you’re not aware, we have over 170,000 school children in the public school systems… how can it possibly be better?”

Meanwhile, he said that the PPP/C will fulfill its promise to reopen the sugar estates, set back by the Opposition’s “right-sizing” which put hundreds of Guyanese on the breadline.

The minister also spoke to the plans for the Linden to Lethem Highway; the gas-to-shore project which has been rejuvenated; the 1.5 billion invested into hinterland roads; tax concessions on mining, agriculture and forestry and more

On the other hand, former Minister of Telecommunications, Cathy Hughes giving her opinion on Budget 2020, claimed that it does not give proper consideration of realities of Guyana. She said that while Guyana is rightfully being dubbed as the soon-to-be Dubai, the country, at this critical juncture, is still without a known Minister of Finance.

She also criticised the reopening of the sugar estates which would provide employment for thousands of sugar workers and lamented the lack of budgetary allocation to deal with Guyana’s ethnic and racial intolerance. This matter falls within the realm of the Ethnic Relations Commission, which recently received a budgetary sum of $221M. Leading members of the coalition were also blamed for instigating the chaos that erupted following the recent murder of the Henry cousins.

She told the National Assembly: “Whichever way you cut it Mr. Speaker, we have failed to forge the one people, one nation with a common destiny we can all subscribe to. Until we do, no amount of oil discoveries, thousands of barrels of oil a day, will make a difference or stop the blood that will continue to be shed.”