–Dr Singh says, affirms Budget 2023 will continue Guyana’s transformation

BUDGET 2023, according to Senior Minister with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, will continue to deliver on the things that are necessary to improve the lives of all Guyanese.

Dr Singh, during an interview on Friday, said that the budget will constitute another instalment through which the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government led by President, Dr Irfaan Ali, will continue to improve the lives of all Guyanese people within the context of the President’s philosophy of One Guyana.

“…the oneness of our country… [it is] the fact that we’re all united around the common cause of advancing and developing our country, and the fact that people start participating and benefitting from the incredibly exciting transformation that is taking place, and that even more so will continue to take place in the future in this beautiful country,” Minister Singh said.
He related that the manifesto itself is the subject of extensive consultation with stakeholders, and with the people of Guyana, and formed the basis of review.

“It comprises the things that we committed to the people of Guyana, that we will deliver, and therefore guides all that we do as a government. The manifesto has, therefore, been translated into successive annual budgets aimed at delivering these manifesto commitments,” Dr Singh said.
Further, the budget also has the projected outcomes in the economy, macroeconomic outcomes such growth in the economy, growth in the respective sectors and the updated fiscal framework: the revenues expenditure, and more.

“The budget process is also situated within a certain macroeconomic context. What is happening in the global economy? We have to constantly update ourselves on what is happening in the global economy because of course, Guyana is a part of the global economic system,” Minister Singh said.

He added that the global economy has been going through extremely tumultuous times, not only as a result of COVID-19, but also the war in Ukraine and the lockdown associated with the COVID-19, which increased freight charges.

“Global inflationary pressures we’ve seen around the world, economies responding to emerging global inflationary pressures and trying to rein in inflation as a result of escalating fuel and food prices and so on… that has now brought with it of course some element of recessionary risk,” Dr Singh said.

The government, however, as economic policymakers, has to constantly keep an eye on what is happening in the global economy, and how that will feed through multiple channels into the domestic economy.

To achieve this goal, the government remains constantly engaged with multiple stakeholders in society.
“…because we want not only to form our own, not only to be guided by our own perspectives on developments in the global economy and developments in the domestic economy, but importantly, we want to hear from other stakeholders in society, what their perspectives are, how they see things evolving, what are their main concerns, their main issues, what their perspectives are on key issues that are confronting us,” Dr Singh said.

He related that the government prides itself on the closeness of its engagement with stakeholders in society and added that they have an ongoing engagement with the private sector, the religious community, even the industrial sector and special interest groups.

“The private sector of Guyana had been reeling from five years [2015-2020] of bad policy at a time when our economy should have been growing rapidly because we were gearing up for oil. We were growing at an extremely anaemic level and there was the non-oil economy [which] had almost disappeared… Agriculture had been deliberately neglected and was suffering the consequences [of] political vindictiveness by the APNU+AFC,” Dr Singh said.

He noted that one of the first tasks that the PPP/C faced when returning to office was the restoration of Guyana’s attractiveness as a destination for private investment, and the country’s status as a hospitable place in which to do business.

“We value the role of the private sector in creating jobs and in generating incomes, and we will work with the private sector to ensure that they continue to create more jobs for Guyanese people, and that they generate more incomes for guidance households,” Dr Singh said.