OPINION: PPP says 48% poverty is for 2019 (PNC); I say it is not far from that (2021-22 and PPP)

Last Updated on Friday, 4 November 2022, 6:11 by Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

I read in SN that “48% poverty rate reflects 2019 figures -Finance Minister”.  Thanks, Dr. Minister for the clarification; and, as expected, the PPP Government came out swinging in response to that eyepopping World Bank report.  These are my positions.

First, since the World Bank figures on poverty are from 2019 (as updated), there can only be one conclusion: the PNC is totally responsible for that damning 48% poverty statistic; the PPP had nothing to do with Guyanese getting to that wasted state, where its people can’t feed themselves, live with dignity.  The only other conclusion that I can come to is that Guyanese existed with plenty and contentment before 2015, and that this deplorable 48% poverty reality only came about during the years 2015-2019.

Second, and here I have some news for the man overseeing the money.  According to the World Bank it was 48% using 2019 data, which was three years ago, and makes me wonder what the Hon Minister has left unsaid, leaving us to claw out of the air.  Given that Guyana’s oil has been on the market for almost three years now, and the talk of the world, it follows that the poverty should be anything other than 48%.  I would hope that the Finance maestro will not insult Guyanese by asserting that poverty doesn’t exist here.  Or that poverty since then has declined from that horrendous 48% steeple to 28% in 2021, then less than 8% in 2022.  He can insult Guyanese and get away with it, but shouldn’t try that with those who think, observe, absorb, and know.

Some may be squeamish in describing their pressing conditions as poverty, but when countless Guyanese across the ten Regions cannot afford to buy the range of basics necessary for daily survival, then that relays to me that ‘dem aint gat nuthin’ and that they are scavenging around for any morsels that they can find.  If they don’t have enough for food today (2022), then there are at or below the poverty line.  If and when Guyanese don’t have enough to buy what is required for a rudimentary existence at the markets and supermarkets (vittles), then it translates to the fact that the rent, the light bill, and the minibus fare are all about what is out of reach, amounts to an existential struggle.  The Hon Minister may differ, but that sounds and smells suspiciously (and rankly) like poverty to me.  Not one of us should need a think tank to enlighten us on that score.  Or clever PPP propaganda.  The final analysis of any analysis is that many Guyanese live in poverty, the sum may not amount to 48%, but I don’t think that it is 38% or lower.  Not yet, and not with all this oil money.

Third, though we may not know exactly where matters stand currently on the statistical side, my position is that it cannot be too distant from 48%.  Whether it is 40% or 30%, or even 25% for 2021 and 2022, it is still way too steep, and too hurtful to those living in poverty.  This just should not be in any society where there is so much oil, so many sweet speeches, and such an abundance of riches overwhelming this land.  Well, the PPP Government figures delivered daily are there to buttress what I am putting out before the public, aren’t they, and what should not be?

Fourth, because of COVID-19 and the still ongoing global supply chain management crisis, two favorite whipping boys of the PPP Government (and, of course, the poverty-initiating and instilling PNC), prices have skyrocketed, and unlike those ones that the Americans send up to somewhere, they are not coming down.  Indeed, people were hungry and hurting and without under the PNC, let there be no mistake or covering up on those.  But, as I discern, it was never at this acutely piercing level.  Think of this: in 2019, Guyanese working for $44,000 were able to buy more with that than with $60,000.  That’s not slipping into darkness, but sliding into sickness and emptiness.  In a word, poverty.

It seems that everybody I encounter, I speak with, have the same lament: ‘ting baad, tings haad, de times sadd.’  It may not possess the clinical authority of the World Bank, but there is a certain harrowing strain to those laments, and it comes across as stricken and stretched people grappling with the travails of living in poverty.  Again and again, I am adamant that this should not be the case in a country like Guyana, which has more oil than there were dinosaurs.  All I say to the Finance Master (and his President and Vice President) is balance up hand please, so that Guyanese can walk in balanced ways in their demanding days.  A little less for roads and a little more for the table and pills.

Last, the World Bank reported that Guyana is now classified as “upper-middle income.”  For whom, please?  The people in Pradoville and Bel Air and Republic Park, and similar such wards, I agree.  But how many do those privileged souls represent?  How many re-migrants does Guyana have present?  How many shore-base and connected contractors and upper-tier commanders of commerce are there around?  And how much, may I ask, do their combined earnings and profits (and thieveries) contribute to that declaration about “upper-middle income” society?  What weight was given to their intakes that such a conclusion could be arrived at by the World Bank?  To say this my way, put 100 men making a billion each, and the result is “upper-middle income” for a whole country, including the rest of the almost 800,000 citizens.  They get dragged into the “upper-middle income updraft, except that they don’t know it, feel it, or live in that lovely state.

Here is my summation: too many Guyanese are dirt poor (maybe 30%) and it just shouldn’t be in a land with so much oil wealth.