Guyana’s Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton is questioning the viability of programmes rolled out by the government amidst the lack of official statistics in the country. With Guyana’s 2024 budget standing at a whopping $1.146 Trillion, Norton is adamant that the allocation and expenditure must the driven by data.
To this end, Norton said that the opposition is committed to the good governance of Guyana. Anticipating a win at the 2025 General and Regional Elections, the leader said that his government will dedicate resources to hiring experts, consultants and thousands of Guyana’s young people to conduct analysis and gather data.
“Right now, even the Minister with Responsibility for Finance (Dr. Ashni Singh) must surely be in the dark as to the unemployment rate or the rate of wage growth or contraction last year since no official statistics are being regularly published. This is unacceptable and we need to see a renewed focus on gathering data and conducting analysis. There is a saying that you cannot manage what you cannot measure, and that certainly is the case in Guyana today,” the Opposition Leader noted during his contribution to the budget debates on Friday.
He added that while pertinent data on these vital issues are either absent or unpublished, lamented the “epic scale of the waste and the squander mania”. These can be measured, he said, noting the government’s alleged refusal to engage with IMF estimates that out of every dollar spent in the Public Sector Investment Program, 41 cents are lost.
“Last year, ignoring these necessary reforms resulted in $172 billion dollars in waste and this year that total will climb to over a quarter of a trillion Guyana dollars. In fact, the PPP is borrowing approximately as much money as it is wasting. This squandering of our nation’s patrimony must not continue,” he said.
