The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport – or the sporting ministry?

Beneficiaries of hundreds of millions in Sports and Arts Development Fund uncertain.

Today’s column continues a review of the 2011 budgetary allocations by the National Assembly to some of the principal ministries of government by looking at the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, a ministry with which the Guyana Tennis Association of which I have been President for about eighteen months has had a long and unsatisfactory relationship.

As the table below shows, the total to be spent by this ministry in 2011 is $2.055 billion, 28% over 2010 and a 73% increase over 2009. If one wants to see how strange this government’s priorities are, one has only to compare this ministry’s budget with that of the combined campuses of the University of Guyana which in 2011 were allocated $582 million in 2009 and $657 million in 2010. Indeed, in 2011, the National Assembly voted more for sports in 2011 than the total allocation to the University of Guyana for