OPINION: Budget 2025 takes a hatchet to poor Guyanese heads

Last Updated on Sunday, 19 January 2025, 13:20 by Writer

by GHK Lall

The 2025 budget is callousness in numbers; it skewers Guyana’s expectant, needy, impoverished. It is a hatchet budget, one that drives a hatchet into whatever hopes the poor people in Guyana harbored. Its theme “A secure, prosperous, and sustainable Guyana” is so lame as to be a shame. Secure, prosperous, and sustainable for whom? When Guyanese could not share in the richness of GDP at 43.6% (or 46.3%), what is this year and the next going to look like, feel, at 10.6% growth? I shudder, want to scream for what awaits Guyanese at the lower rungs of the local economic ladder. Budget presenter, Dr. Ashni Singh rightly said that “we don’t have enough people”. What he wrongly omitted was that there is enough to go around so that every Guyanese can experience what it is to live in a country with a top 10 GDP figure; one that currently produces 650,000 barrels of oil daily and is set to reach 674,000 a day during this year.

The budget increased by $236 billion, and all I read of is an increase of GY$5,000 for 76,000 pensioners; an additional US$25 monthly to cope with a laughable, contemptible 5.6% food inflation construction. Inflation stats in Guyana must be the work of some demented genius. How will pensioners manage from month to month with an increase that is nothing but heinous in a country like this, considering all its gaudy economic numbers? Numbers are bandied about in the billions casually, and the US$25 increase is what pensioners must live with, and shoved to the side to manage. Look at how much the government has done. Look at how much it cares: $55,000 for schoolchildren, which is $4,583 monthly boost for parents. Is the PPP Government this depravedly indifferent to the struggles of Guyanese parents and pensioners? It sounds like a big, caring package, that $55,000 per child. But is it when put before a seller, lived with when prices of basic consumables soar and soar? What was already just beyond the fingertips at full stretch now becomes totally out of reach. With economic growth projected to slow to the relatively pedestrian 10.6%, the lining may be that prices may have to follow suit so that goods can be turned over.

Dr. Singh can be pardoned for being excited about the measly 3% decrease in the income tax rate, and free pay (no income tax) on the first $50,000 of overtime, or a second job. How much of a difference does that make? And why in a country with the extraordinary statistics that Guyana enjoys, must any Guyanese be forced to plough the roads and fields of work in a second job? Perhaps, that is an admission of how hard-pressed Guyanese are to manage their homes with some dignity, some needed provisions. As a swift aside, things are so tight in this country that even million-dollar-a-month ministers have to hustle through side businesses to keep their heads above water. Indeed, things are that tough, that even ministers and top public servants must engage inside jobs. Lucrative ones, I should add. Money begets money, and in vast quantities for the PPP plutocracy. I plan to get around to those budget provisions the next time around. “A secure, prosperous, and sustainable Guyana” reveals who that budget theme really addresses.

The increase in the tax threshold by $30,000 signifies an extra $7,500 per month (25% rate) in the pay of active workers at the $130,000 level. Plus, there is the $10,000 per child tax relief (tax credit or monthly deduction)?). Randomly using an average of two children under 18 per parent/family provides a total of $5,000 more per month in the pockets of Guyanese earners, if I am treating this correctly. To give credit where it is due to the government, active workers did better than mainly homebound pensioners. When that $7,500 monthly tax bump (threshold increase) and $5,000 tax relief for two children are added to the $4,583 schoolchildren caring provision, Guyanese workers and parents are better off by $17,083 more every 30 days. In effect, the 2025 prospering and sustainable budget means GY$569 (US$2.64) a day more for Guyanese workers and parents. It is relief that goes a long way.

I acknowledge the NIS, health tests, and newborn cash grant provisions in the budget. The government may congratulate itself about being generous and helpful, which is likely to encounter fierce disagreement. For my part, I point out to the less than universal application of those budget relief measures. Against this backdrop, Minister Singh indicated that up to US$2.5 billion could be withdrawn from the Oil Fund this year. The PPP Government is planning to withdraw the equivalent of GY$500 billion (US$1: GY$200) and by my rough first count, less than 10% or GY$50 billion is earmarked for much-needed relief in the hands of struggling citizens.

My conclusion is that the PPP Government was very resourceful in coming up with ways to skimp on giving Guyanese real relief. By dealing in and highlighting a few billions for this, and a few just-as-paltry billions for that, the government unveiled a budgetary farce that it was doing much for battered citizens. Regardless of the way in which I look at this 2025 budget, I recoil. My first take is that this is a budget that takes a hatchet to the heads of hurting Guyanese. Dr. Ashni Singh would have done better to read that budget only to himself. Then weep.