A MOTION by the APNU+AFC calling on the government to provide a $200,000 cash grant to all adults on a quarterly basis has been shot down by Vice-President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo as unrealistic and a gimmick by the Coalition.

Through the motion, the Vice-President estimates that the Coalition is seeking to get the government to shell out around US$500M to US$600M or billions of Guyana dollars in cost-of-living relief, an amount close to the some US$700M has been sitting in its Natural Resource Fund.

Mr Jagdeo said he found it strange that the APNU+AFC when in government, took away the education grant from children and mandated old age pensioners pay VAT on electricity and water, but is now asking that citizens be given just under US$1,000 per year.

“I can’t imagine any sane person, any sensible person falling for that. That same philosophy, living above your means that same philosophy caused Guyana to collapse economically by 1992 when we became the second poorest country in the hemisphere, just below Haiti,” Mr Jagdeo reminded in reference to PNC Government in the pre-1992 era.

Aubrey Norton, the Leader of the PNC/R, he also reminded, is from that era.

However, the amount proposed by the Coalition in their motion is significantly less than the US$5,000 proposed by elements of the Coalition when the Coalition was in government.

But Jagdeo maintained that no one or no country should try to live above their means and the motion is reflective of the PNC/R’s consumption philosophy with little or no vision or plans for the future.

Honouring the Coalition’s motion, he said, will put Guyana in a position where it will hardly have money to spend on training of its people to transform the country, build schools, hospital, roads and other vital infrastructure to improve services and create wealth for the country.

According to Mr Jagdeo, the government will only do realistic things and pointed out that it has moved Guyana from a state of insolvency in 1992 to the most viable economy in this part of the world today in terms of stock of debt and debt servicing as share of budget revenue.

Guyana, he said, will plan for the future and will do all it can to avoid the pitfalls experienced by other nations as a result of poor economic policies and injudicious spending of their oil revenues.

The government, he said, is concerned too about the rising cost of living and since coming into power in August 2020, it has doubled old age pension, increased school children’s uniform allowance, removed scores of burdensome taxes implemented by the Coalition and restored the education grant. The education granted was increased to $25,000 and extended to private schools. It will be further increased to $50,000 by the end of the government’s first term in office, said the Vice-President.

All these interventions, he said, was done without spending a cent from the oil money in the Natural Resource Fund.

The motion to give Guyanese $200,000 every quarter is a gimmick to “excite people,” said Mr Jagdeo, who added: “It is not realistic, practical or wise to do that, we cannot fund it, it will put us in more debt.”

Guyana cannot build a future spending its oil money this way, said the Vice-President.