For various reasons governments in this part of the world tend to escape rigorous scrutiny of the judiciousness of their expenditure on behalf of the public. The main reasons here are the absence of access to information architecture in an already secretive society, the fear of speaking openly, degraded public watchdogs, a poorly functioning parliament and the trumping of the public interest by political loyalty in large sections of the population.
So whereas in other places the scandal over the expenditure of hundreds of millions on shoddy work at the Good Hope Stelling would have led to a parliamentary level enquiry and ended in the resignations of the public officials involved and the fining or charging of the private contractors, in these parts the official report on the inquiry is still to be released and more work is going to be done now to retrofit the stelling for the roll on/roll off Chinese ferries. Didn’t the government have any inkling when it commissioned the Good Hope work that it might be investing in (or at least begging for) these super-sized Chinese ferries? It delineates starkly how poor this government has been at planning in many sectors. Planning or the ability to do so eludes it.
Whereas the coming years may tell us a lot about the prudence of the expenditure on the One Laptop Per Family programme, the fibre optic cable and the Amaila Falls project there are already examples of reckless spending on a grand scale and bungled conceptualizing by this government. Very early on in his career President Jagdeo himself was the architect of the disastrous President’s Youth Choice Initiative which squandered hundreds of millions in herds of white elephant buildings and hare-brained schemes that have produced very little. So much money has been sunk into projects that are supposed to help young people secure gainful employment and yet so many of them are at loose ends and barely eking out a living. In recent months there have been several cases where youths barely 16 and 17 have gone to sea and tragically lost their lives in attempting to help impecunious families. Last week a 17-year-old cane cutter, Stephon Bacchus was chopped to death having sought work to help send his two sisters to school. Apparently the schemes of the Ministries of Youth, Social Services and Labour avoided him completely.
One scheme which has been much promoted by Minister of Agriculture, Mr Robert Persaud has been the Grow More Food campaign. Again, hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars and borrowed funds have been put into this project for only dubious returns. Yet, more and more money has been allocated to it. In August of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture took it upon itself to declare that the project would be expanded as the first phase had been successful. The first phase in part entailed the distribution of seeds, implements and other items to assist in expanded agriculture. We are unaware of any independent assessment of the merits of this programme and what it achieved and hence the basis upon which it should continue.
In outline a Grow More Food campaign sounds eminently sensible as food security is important and commodity prices globally have been on the rise and the trend is for this to continue. However, the reality on the ground is usually quite different. Inevitably if the same sets of seeds are handed out to all and sundry then successful cropping would lead to seasonal gluts and the people most likely to be affected by this would be the very people who were dependent on farming for their livelihood but who could no longer sell or at least at a decent price because of the profusion of these particular cash crops.
A properly thought out Grow More Food campaign we humbly propose should have revolved around two things. First, the main non-traditional farmers should have been the primary targets. They are the people with the know-how and the motors to drive expanded growth. Their operations should have been transformed or pooled together into the `mega farm’ concept that Trinidad is attempting. They would then continue supplying their local market but at the same time begin strategic targeting of export markets as this is where much more money could be raked in. They would then be channeled to high value crops which were in demand in proximate markets and then gradually the infrastructure would be developed to reap, store and export these crops having dealt with pesky irritants such as red tape, phytosanitary issues and non-tariff barriers. Later on value adding could be introduced. There has been no such organizing. It has been scattershot: blackpepper and turmeric here, mushrooms there, cauliflower somewhere else and fertilizer assistance when politically expedient. The sum total of this huge expenditure would likely be that while food security might have temporarily been boosted, farmers have not been catapulted onto a new plane of production in terms of scale, variety, value or earnings.
The second major plank of the campaign should have been to cut the value of food imports. Caricom has been moaning about its food import bill and Georgetown is the residence of the Jagdeo Initiative on agriculture. Whereas in Trinidad and Jamaica there are clear attempts to identify how those foreign purchases – import substitution has a negative ring here – could be limited, there has been no such thinking in Georgetown or certainly not above the radar. All of Guyana knows that two of the major food imports are potatoes and onions. Both have been tested decades ago in the hinterland with varying success and with questions lingering about the cost and difficulties of getting it to markets. It was never going to be easy but if the Grow More Food programme was going to work this should have been its key objective and challenge: find a way to grow potatoes and onions cheaply so that there is a significant dent in the import bill and a new wave of hinterland farmers and their families could well have been added to productive life. Nothing of the sort has occurred.
Minister Persaud has had five years and his government 19 years uninterrupted to test and fully develop these projects to no avail. They apparently however could always rely on the IDB to fork over money for supposed diversification projects the basis of which aren’t clearly set out and money which will have to be repaid by taxpayers. The expenditure on this programme should be carefully examined by the incoming government and halted or seriously revamped.
In an illuminating letter to Stabroek News on October 23rd, Dr Kenrick Hunte posited that the evidence showed that contrary to the government’s assertion, Guyana is becoming more dependent on imported food. He cited statistics from 2001 to 2010 on a variety of crops with export potential such as cassava, plantain, hot pepper and coconuts which have seen declines whereas there should have been upswings. His letter attracted a reply on October 25th from Mr George Jervis, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture which failed to address the issues raised.
It is still not too late for Minister Persaud and the NGMC to present the evidence of the results of the Grow More Food Campaign. This requires credible data on output of non-traditional goods between 2006 and 2011, the average retail price to farmers, the exports over this period and their value and any reduction in the value of food imports. These results can then be ranged against the value of the Grow More Food Campaign and the public will then be in a better position to judge.
