Introduction
Today’s column and the next three provide a wrap-up commentary of aspects of the Buxton Proposal, which I believe have been somewhat misconstrued; whether by design or otherwise, in various public and private exchanges. My intent here is to deal with four of those aspects; namely, 1) how original am I in putting forward a call to use windfall oil revenues to finance cash transfers to citizens as a leading poverty policy intervention vehicle; 2) does the Proposal seek to replace or miniaturize other government social safety provisions; 3) how best to describe the prevailing situation in Guyana’s emerging petroleum industry on the eve of its second anniversary of First Oil; and 4) as a rule how best to estimate state share of oil revenues or Take from the net cashflow, which is generated by Guyana’s ruling Production Sharing Agreement, PSA? These items are discussed below in the order listed, with the fourth running over into next week’s column.
