Dear Editor,
A statistician, letter writers, bloggers and Minister Manickchand have responded to Mrs Sheila Holder’s thesis of phantom pensioners by proposing projected data on the number of individuals above the age of 65. The implicit assumption of this rebuttal is that the number of pensioners is equal to the number of Guyanese over sixty-five years and older. This assumption has its problems since it is not necessary that the number of pensioners be equal to the number of Guyanese sixty-five years and older.
In her budget presentation, the Minister used projected data. Two time periods were given – 2005 and 2010. However, Mrs Holder based her analyses using data (on actual number of pensioners over the period 2002 to 2009) provided by the Minister herself. I believe the invocation of projections is meant to obfuscate the issue at hand. The crucial issue has to do with whether taxpayers’ monies are being siphoned away by an artificial inflation of the number of pensioners. Moreover, the projected numbers do not answer the fundamental question raised by Mrs Holder, that is, why has there been a sudden increase in the number of pensioners in 2007, 2008 and 2009?
Let me present the data – provided to Mrs Holder by the Minister herself – on the actual number of pensioners. Again, I would like to emphasize the difference between the actual number of pensioners (provided by the Minister) and the projected number of Guyanese sixty-five years and older given by the UN expert statistician. The table below shows the Minister’s numbers from which I calculate the yearly change in the number of pensioners and percentage change. Firstly, I show the yearly change in the number of pensioners. In the year 2007 the change jumped to 3375 from -54 the previous year. This change remained high for 2008 and 2009. Secondly, the percentage growth rate increased significantly from -0.16% in 2006 to 10.09% in 2007. This growth rate was also quite high in 2008 (9.71%) and 2009 (7.45%).
The growth rates also expose a mathematical inconsistency in the Minister’s presentation. The Minister is pinning her hopes on forecasted numbers with a stable annual growth rate of 0.33%. However, over the period 2002 to 2009 the observed data show wide swings in the annual growth rates, instead of a smooth exponential growth path as is typically given by the exponential projection equation of the form [OAP (t) = exp(gt)] where OAP is the number of old age pensioners at time period (t), g is the 0.33% growth rate used for the projection (based on several scenario assumptions by the expert statistician), and t is the time period. Until the Minister explains why the actual growth deviates significantly from the projected growth, Mrs Holder’s thesis of the existence of phantom pensioners is solid.
I believe this issue is not yet settled. The job of the AFC is to raise the matter of the sudden increase in the number of pensioners. The Minister still owes the nation an answer to this question. What specific policies did the government implement to cause such a significant increase in the annual changes and growth rates?
Yours faithfully,
Tarron Khemraj
