During his stewardship of the Guyanese economy, former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan expended some $333B on capital works. Of that, government borrowed $220B. While there isn’t any major infrastructure to show for it, Jordan insists the money was well spent on transforming the lives of citizens countrywide.
The economist said as much during an interview on the online platform Globespan where he fielded questions about his time in office. There, he was asked to speak about some of the transformational projects that resulted from the expenditure of over $330B.
The former Minister said, “I don’t know what people call transformational; that has become an overused adjective. If you live in Sophia and you don’t have water and note that Sophia has about 15,000, maybe 20,000 residents… and if you were able to give residents pipe water in that five years then that was a transformational project for the coalition… transformation means transforming the lives of people…go into the indigenous communities and see the difference that we made and what we did, whether it is with internet, roads etc.”
The economist added, “If you are looking for a massive bridge across the river, you will not find it but you will find in every community in this country, a project that transformed their lives and that is the difference we need to make with oil money. We don’t want skyscrapers in this country; what we want is to move the water from no place to at least the ground floor, we want potable water where there isn’t any.”
The former minister argued that the transformation of people’s lives is empowering them to be able to buy vegetables and provisions such as bora, pumpkin, and dasheen. He believes true transformation is akin to giving citizens decent salaries so that they may lift their standard of living.
While Jordan holds steadfast to his belief that the APNU+AFC had spent the funds in question wisely, the PPP/C Government believes otherwise.
His successor, Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh has on several occasions lambasted the former APNU+AFC government for spending $1.2 trillion in the last five years, thereby leaving the economy in a disastrous state.
Dr. Singh, and the government also accused the coalition of leaving behind an abused Contingency Fund and US$400 million in new external debt.
