Dear Editor,
There is tremendous public pressure on the current administration to deliver more jobs and higher wages in the public sector. The public sector wage issue has its roots in the late 1980s to early 1990s with the implementation of the Economic Recovery Programme under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and subsequent IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes, and it is an absolute certainty that both this and job creation will continue to dog the present and subsequent administrations until properly addressed. Both issues are sore points in the media which need no further comment.
At issue are appropriate solutions. Both have simple remedies which need to be worked out within a larger policy framework to facilitate dialogue and agreement as a national proposal.
I remember President, Brigadier (rtd) David A Granger, addressing senior ranks across the ministries on the need to strengthen their technical skills to deliver on the mandate he envisages for his government. He is not off the mark. A hallmark of the former administration was its strategy of underdeveloping the public sector.
Another instance of institutional weakness in delivering on solutions for our economic problems falls directly within the portfolio of President Granger himself. The Bank of Guyana is tasked with advising government on economic policy matters, and the problems that have beset the Bank are exactly those which straddle the government ministries, namely a paucity of technical resources and individuals dedicated to policy formulation and development.
Again, this was all part of the former administration’s plan, since policy, more particularly decisions on expenditure, was developed directly at, or above the Office of the President at the time under the able eye of Mr Jagdeo. There was no need for professionals to be engaged in policy development in the ministries or the Bank below the most senior level of these institutions.
The Bank has suffered enough. To negotiate the kinds of solutions needed to address our current problems, there needs to be a changing of the guard, and the longer this is drawn out, the more time is lost.
Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester
