Challenges and threats to economic stability

Part 4

In this week’s column I begin consideration of the third grouping of challenges and threats facing near to medium-term macroeconomic stability in Guyana.  This grouping is described here as socio-political, and, as indicated in last Sunday’s column, this covers two separate items, namely 1) income/consumption poverty, inequality, and vulnerability, and 2) the socio-political aftermath to the November 28, 2011, National and Regional Elections.

Poverty

Despite the fact that, at the start of the PPP/C’s administration in 1992 two decades ago, poverty was considered by the authorities to be the most intractable social, economic and political problem facing Guyana, over that long period of time there have been only three years in which an annual national survey of living conditions and poverty has been conducted: 1992, 1999 and 2006.  Under the prodding and guidance of the international financial institutions (IFIs), official policy to deal with poverty was first put forward in the form of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in 2001, co-authored with the IMF-World Bank group.  Subsequently, two progress reports on the PRSP were issued in 2004 and 2005.  In 2008 a second PRSP was