Dear Editor,
Minister Jordan’s comments to Demerara Waves on June 5th touch on two critical and interlocking issues I had previously raised in the letters column. The first issue involves the suggestion that the country should capitalize on its future oil revenues now through pre-production borrowing on global financial markets (‘Guyana should go the route of resource-based borrowing’ SN, January 15, 2017). The second issue involves my warning that the oil finds may have produced a mindset which misguidedly assumes that the country’s training priorities must of necessity be focused mainly on oil and not also on the range of other skills an expanding government expenditure will demand (‘Skills that an economy fuelled by oil revenues will demand’ KN, May 7, 2017).
On the first issue, the Demerara Waves reports Mr Jordan as stating that taking advances from oil revenues to help stimulate the economy makes no sense in a country where there is already sufficient money in the treasury but limited human resources to spend it. On the second issue, the Minister is reported as saying that part of the solution to fix the human resource deficit is to focus on personnel expansion and reallocation in the key government ministries.
In starker terms than before, we are being told that behind the exciting prospect of multi-billion dollar oil payments lurks the reality that Guyana’s development will remain choked unless we remove the human resources bottleneck. Worded differently, if the economy continues to depend on government spending as a main driver of economic growth, and if the government is unable to spend even the current budget, oil revenues will create only pipe dreams. And, as I asserted in the May 7th letter, this incapacity cannot be fixed by the narrow focus on establishing oil schools and programmes.
The situation amounts to a national crisis and we must urgently look for fixes. A worthwhile consideration is to set up a high-level task force with enough ministerial involvement and technical experts to quickly put together a plan of action and, essentially, to oversee its implementation. Among other ideas, we should (i) undertake a short-to-medium term analysis of skill needs, (ii) reorient and streamline our technical and tertiary institutions to respond to these needs with speed, flexibility, and quality, (iii) modernize our public procurement system, (iv) incentivize the entry of more firms into the local contracting industry for goods, services and works, (iv) find ways to attract foreign firms and overseas-based Guyanese talent, and (v) work with the private sector to improve the supply chain for such critical imports as construction material.
Minister Jordan is best positioned to understand the full scope of the crisis. He must take the lead.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe
