THE World Bank’s recent fact sheet on Guyana, which covers 2019, says the share of the population living below US$5.5 a day was at around 48 per cent and among the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. It also noted the country’s very high emigration and brain drain rates.

Although the report accounts for 2019, it is necessary to see the entire document in proper historical context.

For starters, for a significant part of the second half of the 20th Century, Guyana was under the stewardship of the leading party in the current opposition alliance; and for 28 years the nation, despite its richness in gold and other valuable resources, was led steadily downhill on a sliding trajectory of shameful economic and social decline.

This downward slide eventually saw the same World Bank — and other reputable financial agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) — all rate Guyana’s economic standard as very poor, next only to Haiti.

It took a return of Electoral Democracy in 1992 and the first PPP/C administration under President, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, to start initiating projects to stem the downward slide.

Dr. Jagan was succeeded by President Bharrat Jagdeo, who, as Finance Minister under Dr. Jagan, started laying the basis for a positive turnaround in the nation’s finances, which fructified during his two terms, resulting in positive economic performances that laid the basis for recovery to follow through to the administration led by President Donald Ramotar – and now led by President, Dr. Irfaan Ali.

The PNC, APNU and AFC failed several times in office to find ways and means to stem the slide, but the PPP/C has been able, over the past 30 years, to build a formidable team of finance administrators, currently led by Senior Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh and others.

Oil and Gas is an undisguised blessing and in the collective hands of the current financial administrators, who, over the past two years, have satisfactorily managed the industry with results that are both seen and felt.

On the contrary, based on the fact sheet that captures a period under the former APNU+AFC Government, The World Bank said: “Poverty rates were highest in the sparsely-populated interior or hinterland, where communities had limited access to economic opportunities, healthcare and public services…”

There’s no escaping the fact that the current administration isn’t responsible for the other quoted findings of “high emigration and brain drain, with 39 per cent of all Guyanese citizens currently residing abroad and roughly half of all Guyanese with a tertiary education having emigrated to the United States.”

The above paragraph is another fallout from the Opposition’s historic legacy, but this administration and the PPP/C are less interested in who’s to blame than what’s to be done – and where to begin. It knows the first job is to fix the economy and make people’s lives better — and that process has been underway for the past two years, in ways that please the majority of Guyanese at home and abroad.