THE debates came to an end on Friday last with the Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance in the Office of the President, Dr. Ashni Singh, rubbishing many of the arguments of the APNU+AFC parliamentarians in the National Assembly.

He shared, as they would say in creole, ‘licks, left, right and centre’. Dr. Singh made sure the ‘licks’ were mixed with a financial lecture on the focus of Budget 2022.

Before his sterling presentation, the former Opposition Leader, Joseph Harmon, had delivered a hum-drum presentation to the House. It lacked substance and passion. It was as though he was travelling in a bus with nobody listening or paying him any mind as his parliamentary colleagues ghosted him.

His points were remarkably handled by Prime Minister Mark Phillips and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Gail Teixeira.

But the opposition APNU+AFC Parliamentarians Catherine Hughes and Roysdale Forde’s arguments were handled excellently by Attorney-General Anil Nandlall, Colin Croal, and Nigel Dharamlall.

All in all, the week-long debates revealed who was prepared and who just came unprepared because there was an increased dependency on reading the prepared speeches which proved problematic at times. It is an outdated way of presenting budget speeches in 2022.

Firstly, the budget for 2022 must be seen as another installment of the government’s financial philosophy. It shows a preference for increased capital expenditure as opposed to the heavy expenditure on the current or reoccurring expenditures. This is in part due to the financial philosophy of successive PPP/C Governments which target heavy capital spending which is critical to Guyana’s mid and long-term development.

The opposition APNU+AFC Coalition did not understand the philosophy of the budget and it came out over and over again in the entire debate.

If one looks at the Budget 2022, the government plans to spend a whopping $217B on capital expenses compared with $103B in 2021. This is a more than 100 percent increase in allocations for projects and things like roads, bridges, buildings and infrastructure. Current expenditure also moved from $279B in 2021 to over $335B this year, which accounts for a 20 percent increase.

It contrasts sharply with the successive APNU+AFC Coalition Government’s largely consumption-based financial style where they were spending indiscriminately on the current expenditure without focusing adequately on the capital expenditure.

Take for instance the 2019 budget presented by former Finance Minister Winston Jordan which was pegged at $330B. This saw the budget that was big on the current expenditure such as rentals and accommodations, salaries and wages, and goods and services. The budget was lagging on the capital expenditure side because of the APNU+AFC Coalition Government consumption-based philosophy on less spending on the projects and infrastructure of the country – moving from $138B on current expenditure in 2014 to $231B in 2019, and likewise decreasing capital spending from $81B to $69B in 2019.

The point is, Budget 2022 focuses attention on the transformation of the country physically while it treats the welfare and needs of the people now. It starts to look at developing the future by making solid capital investments now. The opposition APNU+AFC politicians missed the bigger picture and chose to go with the smaller things which were not sufficiently catered for in their minds. These are the sensational and emotive things to score cheap political points. This was their tone throughout the debates.

Secondly, the budget debates revealed the fact that the opposition APNU+AFC parliamentarians did not do their homework because they would have appreciated that budget 2022 is both pro-poor and welfare-oriented compared to their 2019 budget.

Whereas the Coalition Government had introduced more than 200 taxes and increases, Budget 2022 has zero new taxes and seeks to reduce the already existing ones on the poor and vulnerable.

Poor Guyanese can now benefit from the $50B that would have been spent paying the APNU+AFC Coalition instituted taxes. They have more money in their pockets.

Budget 2022 has $5B to tackle the concerns of rising prices, cost of living, and imported inflation. Some $840M to cover the government’s public assistance programmes and $7.2B in increased old age pension. And the school children will benefit from $5B more when compared to zero dollars under the rulership of the APNU+AFC Coalition. These are all targeting the ordinary citizens and are in addition to a raft of other social and welfare measures that are boldly outlined.

This is one of the most pro-poor budgets with a focus on capital expenditure that was ever presented in Parliament. If we want to continue along the developmental trajectory, difficult decisions and choices will have to be made today for tomorrow.

History has already revealed to us that spending our wealth indiscriminately on the current side of expenditure and not looking at the capital expenditure will leave us financially bankrupt with or without the oil wealth, and without any physical transformation. Guyana can ill-afford to play and gamble at this crucial stage in our development.