Enmore martyrs day - has anything changed?

As usual Jagdeo uses his presidential powers to savagely lash out at anyone who is critical to his rulership or to any who may provide analyses that Jagdeo's leadership (or lack of) is inimical to Guyana’s development. Some time ago he lashed out at the president of the Private Sector Commission (not the current soup drinker). Then a list that includes Yesu Persaud.

More recently he lashed out at Gillian Burton’s suggestion that workers may not be better off today than they were in the past. While Burton’s analysis may have been flawed in its presentation, it does offer some food for thought. Let us answer some questions:

1948: What were the levels of development of Barbados, Trinidad, St Lucia, Suriname, Brazil and ALL other countries in the Caribbean?

1992: what were wages levels comparative to the basket of goods? What could a worker purchase with this wage? Income tax rate? No VAT! Exchange rate was G$190/US$1.

2009: What are the wage levels now comparative to the basket of goods? What can a worker now purchase with this wage? Income tax rate? VAT 16%! Exchange rate is G$206.50/US$1

In 1948 to 1964 saw PPP governance…1992 to 2009 PPP Governance. What is the foreign debt of Guyana in 2009 compared to debt in 1992?

What were Government expenditures then to now?

What was the Presidential travel bill then to now?

Are we really better off?

Riddle of the "seat-stealers"

Riddle riddle riddle
Whoever solves this riddle will win either of the following prizes
1) 15 minutes of free talk on digicel (after you talk for 3 mins)
2) A day's talk for $1/min from GT&T (after you talk for 10 mins)
3) Free breeze from the Guyanese politicians new housing area
4) A blog prize (to be named)


Somebody stole somebody's seat.
The persons who saw it stolen did not report it correctly.
The people who stole it sit in it every week.

Whose seat is it?

Labour may be therapeutic for prisoners

Kaieteur News editorialized the view that labor may be therapeutic for prisoners.
At the risk of being licentious, one wonders if this is in reference to female prisoners being in labor or male prisoners viewing labor pains of women....

Damn these glitzy headlines!

Call Centers in Guyana?

How many call centers are there in Guyana and who provides them with bandwidth?
So far we have found: Qualfon, ATC, NPI.

How many companies we have that sell bandwidth?
GT&T, ENetwork, Broadband, Digicel....

Low carbon strategy for Guyana

The wise persons in Government are working up a Guyanese storm on low carbon strategy.

Anything to change the focus of people from their problems with GPL!

Millions of dollars are being lost through power surges. Hours of valuable work are lost due to long hours of blackout.

While we strategize towards a low carbon future, we are continuously pushing people to buying generators for every home in Guyana - creating untold damage to the environment!

What happens when an island owner runs Power and a roving president runs Guyana?
t-a-l-k t-a-l-k t-a-l-k

We do support such strategy however as we need to care the environment. But, we must proactively care for this Country and take care of its problems that are destroying the environment that we want to care for. Wind, Solar and Hydro have been coming for decades and have not arrived. In the meantime, we lost millions through Fuel imports, carbon emissions and loss of equipment and time. Were we to value this loss, we may well find that it quantifies more than the GoG will get from the people who will 'sponsor' his strategy.

US-based Guyanese missing - let us PRAY

Our prayers are with the family.....

The gentleman is allegedly missing after visiting Buxton.

Let us PRAY that this is not a sign of things waiting to blow up again.

Jagdeo finally admits to the "wrongs" of his Government

Jagdeo has finally admitted that his Government has run down this country. This amazing confession has come finally in answer to calls from everyone for the PNC and PPP to admit to the wrongs they have done to Guyana.

Stabroek's columnist, Kissoon, has quoted Jagdeo's admission in one of his columns:"When we run down our country all the time, then every immigration officer feels that every Guyanese wants to run away.” Obviously Jagdeo is admitting to running down the country.

Is this a hopeful positive beginning of admission to the wrongs they all did to this country? Will Jagdeo continues in this vein? We will wait - but not with bated breath!

Head teachers are still at nursery level

Chief Education Officer says that head teachers are still at nursery level and should learn to embrace. This was done in the presence of Education Minister. Hmmmmmm!

Stabroek News:
Chief Education Officer Genevieve Whyte-Nedd yesterday urged school managers, especially those at the nursery level, to embrace change even as teachers complained of the current curriculum being too taxing for children

Lazy magistrates Billed by Ramson

Ramson has taken first reading of this Bill to parliament.

The bill proposes that a lazy magistrate shall have jurisdiction throughout Guyana. These Lazy Magistrates will be given a clerk each.

These lazy magistrates could only try
- criminal cases where the punishment does not exceed G$10,000
- civil cases where the dispute does not exceed G$25,000

Of course they could transfer cases or adjourn cases.

The question in our minds:
Will Guyana's legal system be better served by this bill?

Prakash Gossai's passing

We are saddened by the passing of Prakash Gossai. (Link)
There are not many persons who have left their domicile in USA to work for Guyana on an almost gratis basis.
Hats off to the Pandit!

How crowded is Guyana?

Guyana is a crowded country. The emigrant population is creating problems for the Government as the challenge for distribution of land remains a tough one.

The Government is cognizant of this fact - that is why they give out very small houselots. Land given out by the Government can only accommodate a regular size house and maybe an outhouse. Government caters for the outhouse because there is an environmental plan for a non-sewage Guyana in the future. The Hope canal will either spread everything or wash into the ocean after flooding its banks annually.

An analysis of the population density of Guyana gives the proof of how crowded this country is. With 215,000 km2 and 700,000 people we have only 0.3 of km2 per person!So really, this country is too crowded.

No wonder people are leaving in droves. Nothing to do with economic problems or crime or any such negative! There's just not enough land around for everyone!

Power for health services!

No power in Guyana; How health services suffer in Guyana:

The acquisition of reliable and affordable power poses a challenge to many health facilities.

- In Guyana the PEPFAR program and the Ministry of Health (MOH) requested USAID assistance in assessing options for improving energy services in health facilities.

- Full service district hospitals located on the coast suffer from expensive, unreliable, and poor quality power.

- District hospitals located in the interior face similar problems compounded by the fact that the power is intermittent, of worse quality, and from a variety of expensive sources.

- Hinterland health centers often have no energy at all.
- The expensive cost of electricity in Guyana makes the long-term operating costs of power intensive health care facilities currently under construction significant.

Full article: Powering health Guyana

Thesis: Donkey-cart Economy

The following is extracted from a letter-writer (Tarron Khemraj) to Kaieteur news
And, the pic is taken from another Blog

The donkey-cart economy has the following characteristics:

1. The production of goods that are at the low end of the global hierarchy of products. In other words, we produce things that people really can do without. Our products are not as special as we would like to believe; not even in CARICOM, let alone the world.

2. Given number 1, it means the income elasticity of demand for the country’s primary exports is small. Meaning as world income (and CARICOM’s income) increases the demand for the country’s products will not rise accordingly. Sugar, for example, is clearly a product that fits the production profile of donkey-cart cart economy. Let’s face it, there is a finite amount of sugar the rich can consume (as a matter of fact, the rich might consume less sugar and sugar-related products as it is one way to stay slim). On the other hand, as the world gets richer we all consume more energy. Therefore, a superior strategy to save the Demerara estates would be ethanol and of course the bi-product of baggasse.

Furthermore, the Jagdeo Administration’s REDD strategy and low carbon development strategy are too narrow and are not likely to impact directly on job creation and industrial development. In addition to the REDD, what the country needs is to develop a bio-energy industrial base with cane sugar as a feedstock for this industrialization. However, the low carbon development strategy should be seen as only one policy measure in a portfolio of industrial policies necessary to raise the welfare of the masses.

3. The production structure of the donkey-cart economy is mainly in the form of low productivity goods and petty services. For instance, immediately after Mr. Hoyte’s ERP the country

stopped producing soaps, toothpaste and similar small consumer items and left it to the local importer in the name of liberalization. The country also destroyed its local plywood making firm and replaced it with a foreign multinational. In a donkey-cart economy it is never a good idea to destroy your manufacturing base no matter how inefficient and trivial it might seem. You have to work with the capitalist class in a industrial policy framework to make the manufacturing base superior.

4. The production structure is made up of products that allow little room for learning by doing, innovation and technological change – the critical ingredients for long-term growth in per capita GDP and higher living standards.

5. Remittances prop up private consumption and create a false sense of success among government officials and the masses.

6. Remittances and underground economic activities indirectly feed foreign exchange into the domestic foreign exchange market from which the central bank (BOG) buys to accumulate foreign reserves (a required target under the IMF’s financial programming). Thus, remittances help to maintain the IMF/WB’s much touted macroeconomic stability (there have been several pro-government letter writers promoting macroeconomic stability as a great achievement). Therefore, a donkey-cart economy can be stable with relatively low inflation (owing to exchange rate stability) as is the case with Guyana. But this notion of macroeconomic stability is narrow, short-term in focus, and does not imply a success on the production/supply side of the economy. This point will take a full academic paper to explicate.

7. The donkey-cart economy imports most of what it consumes. Thus remittances are mobilized by economic actors and are used to make payments for imports of even basic consumer items (some of which we stop producing after the ERP). Therefore, unlike what some IMF/WB literature have argued and have been cited in the local media (see Dr. Prem Misir in SN 02-06-09), remittances are highly unlikely to lead to productive domestic investments in the Guyana context.

8. The donkey-cart economy exports most of its skilled and educated workforce. According to the OECD, Guyana exports 83% of its skilled population (the highest percentage among developing economies). Hence, there is the depreciation of the human capital base, which is a critical ingredient for long-term growth and development. Furthermore, the depreciation of the human capital base also involves the downgrading of the entrepreneurial and risk taking base. Of course, the contribution of human capital to growth (of high quality) is well explicated by endogenous growth theory. Moreover, Guyana is not India and is unlikely to earn the touted brain gain (as Dr. Misir has assumed) as in the Indian case.

9. The government significantly depends on foreign aid and finance from IMF/WB/IDB and bi-lateral aid donors. Even small projects depend on these sources of financing. For instance, the CARICOM building and the Convention Centre were built by grants (with aid-tying I am sure).

10. The government depends on IMF/WB for policy advice and analysis.

Anyone lying about GuySuCo?

Positively untruthful politicians

Who is responsible for the GuySuCo loss of finance from EU? Here is what Ramjattan said in an article in Kaieteur news.
Quoting from Hansard:
Ramjattan: Are we going to get these documents? They are so important that we get them!
Persaud: No, the documents will be provided once we complete the various …..we are engaged in discussions with the EU and some other stakeholders in finalizing ….
Ramjattan: How early?
Persaud: I do not want to tell.
Ramjattan: Give us a projection.
Persaud: I would say some time in the last quarter of 2008”.
The article continues:
Yet when the bubble burst recently concerning the loss of over $1.6 B to GuySuCo as a result of the non-delivery of the Business Plan to the European Union by the March 2008 extended deadline, this same Minister in defence stated that the Business Plan was indeed completed and was in Cabinet as of March 2008 and was given to the EU as of June 2008. This, after the Minister had told us in the Economic Services Committee on 11th July 2008, when he was being questioned, that the Business Plan was not completed.
This Minister was not being truthful, frank or candid to us in the Economic Services Committee. He was bloody lying. His latter position was irreconcilable and contradictory to the one he shared with us in the Economic Services Committee. For this alone he should resign. The loss of that massive sum of $1.6 B under his stewardship in itself is a sufficient other ground. But he would not. In Guyana, under the present PPP regime, this kind of inefficiency may very well realize for this Minister a promotion to the Presidential candidacy for 2011.

Positively good salaries

Who are the "consultants" working with GoG that earn more than US$20,000 per month?
Positive salary!

Corporate Boards

Isn't it time we have a list of who is serving in what boards in Guyana? Let's start listing them.

GuySuCo - Gopaul (Chair), G.Knights (Clico), K. Burrowes, Rajendra Singh, Donald Ramoutar (PPP), J.B.Raghurai, Errol Hanoman (CEO, Guysuco)

NIS - R. Luncheon (PPP), Komal Chand (PPP), P. Cheong, M.Solomon, L. Gossai, C. Dass, E.Welch, D. Miller, P.Martinborough (GenMgr)

NBS -M. McDoom (Chair), Gopaul (GuySuCo), L. Rockcliffe, S.G.Bovell, D.Yhann, S. narine

GPC

PHG

What else?

Guyana never took down a drug lord

Stabroek news says that Guyana has never prosecuted a drug lord
That's positive, ain't it? We never trouble the people that fund our development!
Who are these drug lords?
Look at their contribution to the development of Guyana. Can we do without them?
They fund our election campaigns to begin with (and election coming up)
They own the high new spanking building in and around georgetown.
They fund newspapers and opinion makers.
They own islands in Essequibo
Without them would we have malls and plazas?

They fund ... hey they fund us all who live in Guyana!

After all, Guyana, a poor country, got Prados, Hummers, 5-story buildings, Yachts etc.
So, do we leave our lords alone?