Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday challenged Finance Minister Winston Jordan to disclose the total savings to the economy from the collapse in oil prices, while arguing that the windfall could help finance significant pay hikes for public servants.
Delivering his presentation on the government’s proposed $230B budget for 2016, after which he led a PPP/C walkout from the National Assembly because he was not the penultimate speaker in line with tradition, Jagdeo slammed the Minister of Finance for not doing more for consumers given the steep reduction in oil prices – at points falling below US$30 per barrel. He estimated that over $11B in monies has been saved from the falling global oil prices. He believes that if the money were used to reduce electricity rates, it could in turn create a stimulus as there would be more spending power to the populace. “We heard from the Minister of Finance that the cost for generating power is 28 cent per KWH…first quarter for 2015 when fuel prices were [US$] 70 per barrel and production cost, including amortisation, was [US]13 cents in March of 2015. Fuel prices have now gone down and they are paying [US]$45 that means the generating cost would be about [US] 9 cents per kWh, the minister said [US] 28 cents three times so,” he asserted.
He called on Jordan to show the total sum that the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) has saved since the price of oil began tumbling. “We have argued that the cost of power should go down because of the drop in fuel prices. I request the Minister of Finance table in this house… the sum of money that GPL has accumulated in their bank account because of the difference in the fuel prices falling and they are not adjusting the rates,” he urged.
Jagdeo said that savings from fuel could also be used to increase public servants’ salaries and called on unions to not relent on negotiations until they have secured at least a 50% increase, while pointing out that it should match the increase government gave its Cabinet ministers soon after getting into office. “I hope the public service unions will request at least a 59% increase in their takes,” he said.
Significant increases should also be given to the disciplined services, he argued.
As he closed the presentations from the opposition on the budget, Jagdeo also disputed claims by Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman that all of the country’s productive forests had been given out.
“The fact is that about 55% of the state’s forest has been given out so far in our history, it is about 7 million hectares of 12.5 billion hectares, so it is not true that all our forests have been given out, not true,” Jagdeo said in response to allegations made by Trotman the day before.
Trotman, during his contribution to the debate, said the new government upon assuming office found that “100% or all of our productive forest” was allocated by the past administration.
“How could a responsible government preside over the allocation of all, not some, but all of its productive forest? What about future generations?” he questioned.
‘Best stewards’
But Jagdeo said that the public should not be led astray by assertions not backed by facts as concrete evidence shows a different perspective. “If the argument is that we are raping the forest, then the Norwegians every year based on their assessments… that examine deforestation rates… would not keep their agreement with us. What was the extraction rate in 2014? It was 0.062% and most of it came from small mining, not from forestry extraction… our forests are monitored because of an international agreement,” he stated.
“We were the best stewards of the forests. We kept the forests intact, we negotiated a deal to sell forest carbon, and it’s the largest per capita carbon yield in the world… you are benefitting from that now you have $150M there we are using US$3.1M from the GRIF (Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund) to fund, according to this budget, all the things the honourable member Cathy Hughes spoke about. Most of the things going to the Amerindians are things that we put in place and you opposed,” he added.
He said that included in the forest lands figure he quoted were forest areas given away before his government took office in 1992. “Almost half was given out in the pre-1992 era. Barama (Company Limited) alone has 1.7M hectares. The difference is we gave out 588 concessions in the state forest permits (in total), 2 million hectares …but there are 73 community forest organisations listed there. And they employ directly 3,000 people and indirectly 6,000 and these are leases that are controlled by large numbers of people. I dare the government that said yesterday ‘take it back,’ go to Ituni, Kwakwani the …forest organisations and take it back from the people. It is 10,000 of them,” he said.
Climate change policy
A former Minister of Finance himself, Jagdeo called on the government to tell the nation what was its climate change policy as he opined that cleaning of the city seemed to have been confused with a national strategy. “Our natural resources sector is in shambles…we have no climate change policy, the greening of Bartica is not a climate change policy, planting trees along the highway is not a climate change policy… people seem to be confused with picking up garbage and planting a few trees as a climate change policy…it is how we create new industries to export…we busy hear about planting couple trees and that but this is about transforming a country, the economy, about creating opportunities, more jobs for university students and foresters and those scientists who can go into the forest and explore it,” he said.
He also repeated calls he has been making from the day the budget was presented. He called for the scaling back of the proposed restrictions on the importation of older vehicles, withdrawing the proposal to ban used tyres, exempting farmers and Amerindians from the planned gun licence fee increases and for revising new tax relief requirements and a review of the tax compliance systems.
Jagdeo also registered the PPP’s displeasure at government officials using their coalition’s colours on public buildings and places and said that some government leaders even donned outfits of their party’s colours to attend state functions. “I was president for 12 years and never did I once wear a party colour to a state function… because you belong and represent all of the people, just as we on this side we belong to all of them. I hope we look at these things carefully,” he said.
On completion of his more than two-hour-long presentation, Jagdeo led a walkout as he informed Speaker Barton Scotland that he and his party’s representatives in the House would not listen to the second to last speaker as a decades-old tradition—that the opposition leader be the penultimate speaker—had been broken.
“Until this House fixes the problem, until the other side agrees with something that has become an age-old tradition of this House that the Leader of the Opposition is the penultimate speaker, we will not listen to the debate,” he said.
Jagdeo led a similar walkout for the same reason during the debate of the current administration’s first budget in August last year.
