I interrupt my analysis of the world in 2023 to endorse the trillion-dollar budget. Guyana cannot be mired in poverty yet it has a trillion-dollar budget. Forget about the naysayers; this country is heading in the direction of a future that so long evaded Guyana.

Age has caught up with me and Kit Nascimento. Before our interview began, Kit told me that Guyana is now going somewhere, but it came too late for him to benefit because he is getting on in age. It is the same feeling here. When I examined the contents of that budget I wished that I was still the young UG lecturer that would have benefitted from a trillion-dollar budget. I taught for 26 years at UG and my last pay packet was $168,000.

In today’s Guyana with petrodollars that are transforming Guyana, a carpenter, electrician and mason work for more than $168,000. Kit Nascimento’s feelings I can share. I know what he is talking about because I am in my early seventies.

My daughter did two degrees at UG and we paid for both. I wish UG was free then because those fees and related expenditure over those years amounted to more than two million dollars.
The removal of UG fees in the 2024 budget is something that this country must be proud of and it will form part of the Irfaan Ali legacy. I think Dr. Ali is going to leave a fantastic legacy. I am staking my academic training on it. I am mentally elated that my country now has a future. I see that future in Budget 2024.

There is one external factor about a budget and one intrinsic factor that must be discussed. First, the opposition parties’ raison d’être is to criticize the government. That is what they have to do to attract voters.

People must understand that whatever greater budget we have in 2025, the opposition will knock it down. Once one understands this instinct one should avoid being influenced by the tempestuous dismissal of the 2024 budget by the opposition.

What is horribly unacceptable is when editors, professionals and civil society can see a sound budget yet criticize it just to get at the government. I think all budgets will have holes that academics, trade unionists and entrepreneurs will pick on. No budget in any country will be perfect. But Budget 2024 is a fine budget that should win the approval of the Guyanese people.

The intrinsic factor resides in economic and financial planning. If in one year, you elevate wages and salaries by 50 per cent, you are heading for trouble the next year and the year after that and disaster is coming with an inflationary gun at the county’s head.

What budget planners have to do is to pursue incremental changes. If government increases senior citizen’s pension by 10,000 dollars in 2024, government then creates expectation the next year. People will expect there will be an increase the following year that goes over the $10,000. This is the part of shaping a budget that the layman does not understand, and perhaps will not.

I looked at the budget and for me the essential direction is that enormous allocations have been made that will see growth in other sectors that will avoid the pitfalls of the Dutch disease. To put it in a nutshell, the Dutch disease is the over-reliance of one sector of the economy and other sectors that the country has to expand on for economic success are neglected. Saudi Arabia is going at supersonic speed to diversify its economy and eradicate its complete reliance on oil.

The allocation of 98 billion dollars for agriculture is to my mind one of the highest points of the 2024 budget. If this country is going to carve out a future of economic comfort for Guyanese, it has to use the next 20 years to make Guyana a top agricultural producer among the developing world and it has to become the agricultural foundation on which rests the entire CARICOM family of nations.

One of the provisions of the budget that meets my ideological perspective is the $800 million that have been assigned to assist small businesses. This is one of the requirements for economic justice in developing countries.

There is always a political danger in society when small businesses are minimized. The government should receive plaudits for the support budget 2024 will give small scale entrepreneurs. I am waiting to hear what the anti-government haters are going to say about a budget which by any standards is a brilliant one.