A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) is proposing to spend 58 percent of the 2025 budget on direct cash transfers, thereby completely removing public sector investment in critical sectors like health, education, housing and infrastructure.
It was Dr. David Hinds, one of the leading APNU coalition partners, who made the suggestion at the launch of the party’s election campaign at Square of the Revolution in Georgetown on Sunday evening.
Dr. Hinds proposed “investment in people” through a direct cash transfer of $1 million to every Guyanese citizen.
“We are not talking about handouts – we’re talking about justice,” he said, adding “We believe that by 2025, each Guyanese should be entitled to one million dollars. Not $100,000. That’s frek. We’re talking about a real investment in people.”
Using a conservative estimate of 800,000 citizens, Dr. Hinds’ proposition works out to approximately $800 billion in direct cash transfer. This amount is roughly $289 billion more than the total amount of oil revenues used to finance the 2025 budget.
In fact, this proposal would completely wipe out public sector investment in major sectors of the economy. These include: housing and water which received $135.7 billion; infrastructure $252.8 billion; health $143.2 billion; education $175 billion; human services and social security, $58.5 billion; Amerindian and hinterland development, $7.2 billion; sports $8 billion; youth and children $2.5 billion; culture and arts $3.6 billion; and sanitation and solid waste management, $13.2 billion – all of which adds up to less than the $800 billion direct cash transfer proposed by Dr. Hinds.
The APNU’s Prime Ministerial candidate Juretha Fernandes also made promises of significantly increasing the income tax threshold, thereby foregoing tens of billions in revenues, while at the same time promising massive increases in salaries and old age pension.
Earlier this year, General Secretary of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, cautioned against the opposition’s lack of economic foresight and the feasibility of their lofty promises heading into the 2025 elections.
He noted that these new promises echoed the vague slogan used during the 2015 campaign: “The Good Life for Everyone.”
“It’s the same vague promise they made in 2015, and it’s no different this time,” he said, while questioning the opposition’s ability to craft a practical economic plan.
“They never, in a single way, talked about how the country will earn more, about the diversification of the economy, creating the incentives for investment that will expand job opportunities… none of that. Their philosophy is precisely what got us in the situation, in the 90s,” he said, reflecting on Guyana’s history as a bankrupt country, and one of the poorest in the western hemisphere.
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