-up to their old tricks as usual
AFC’s ‘cake-shop’ economists have done it again. These propagandists definitely do not understand ‘Economics 101’.
I am not interested in their (Tarron Khemraj and Sasenarine Singh) personal drumbeats in the bid to support a failing party (AFC). I am interested in the misleading messages and outright propaganda they are conveying to the Guyanese people, just to secure votes for a party.
Nonetheless, Tarron Khemraj and Sasenarine Singh continue to brag about the AFC’s shopping list manifesto which shows that the party is more of a social services unit than a political party. There is still time for them to change their minds about politics.
What is worst, is that they cannot differentiate between being a politician and an academic. They talk about being an academic, but yet they are hopscotch politicians, political opportunists and weak propagandists for the AFC.  The AFC is therefore contaminated by a  strong contingent of the ROAR people, particularly Khemraj; and his information seems to suggest that he was strongly involved in the ROAR party, an Indian rights activist party which is a dead party. In a game of hopscotch, Sasenarine Singh left the PPP for the AFC to try to get the taste of the finance ministerial post.
The AFC are fooling the people with promises that are impractical. Change does not occur immediately, and for the AFC to vow to create jobs within a year in office, if it wins the 2011 elections, is just merely to get votes from the young people. In the end, they all turn out to be greedy politicians who want a taste of the power, and this type of attitude is already noticeable through their constant internal strife. 
I am a bit confused about how the AFC with its cake-shop economists believe that Guyana can achieve a growth target of 7% to 8% each year and they still do not understand economics 101. No one is denying that Guyana has the potential to do so, but let’s be realistic here; for Guyana to achieve that growth target per year, it will take several years amidst the external economic shocks, global competition and strong influences from the WTO and Work Bank. And therefore, the AFC is telling the Guyanese that if they get into office, and after a possible unsuccessful five years, they will be begging to be in power again with the same hopeless promises. 
Their proposals to reduce VAT from 16% to 12%, to increase the income tax threshold to $50,000, to increase civil servants salary to 20% and increase old-age pensions by 50%, and to reduce PAYE from 33% to 25%, are obviously impractical because even a first-year economics student can determine that these increases along with the reduction in VAT can reduce government revenue significantly and hence reduce government spending. In this case, government revenue will be less than its expenditure resulting in government deficits. So, who will pay for this eventually? While we think we are going to benefit in the short-run by AFC’s mediocre proposals, we have to pay for the enjoyment of these benefits in the long-run.
In a small, developing country like Guyana, the last thing we need is high fiscal or public sector deficit which can discourage foreign and local investors. Sasenarine Singh should understand that the development of a society and its people are not only dependent on these meagre, ostensible benefits. As for Tarron Khemraj, let me remind him about some of the reasons other than the lack of capacity for production of non-quarterly GDP statistics. These include the system of data collection and speed of data accumulation – lags that occur in the production process which impede the accuracy of figures in a shorter period and the difficulty in getting data from businesses in such a short time period.
Without understanding the economic constraints that affect Guyana’ s economy generally, these AFC people are apparently here to abuse our valuable, limited natural resources and exploit our manpower just to achieve their dreamy  per year growth rate and fool us about increases and VAT reduction that will lead to high public sector deficits.