I have been thinking increasingly about Guyana’s current economic challenges in a slightly different way. We have moved from managing scarcity to managing abundance.
For much of our modern economic history, the policy challenge was scarcity—high sovereign debt, limited fiscal space, inadequate foreign exchange, insufficient capital and enormous development needs. The Government of the day has a demonstrated track record in managing that type of economy: recovery from severe debt distress, restoring macroeconomic stability, rebuilding fiscal space and creating the conditions for growth.
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We are no longer managing the same economy. Today, Guyana has substantially greater fiscal resources, rapidly expanding liquidity and incomes, a massive public investment programme and strong private demand. The constraint is increasingly shifting from ????? ?? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ???????????? ??????, ??? ??? ????????
That distinction is important.
If fiscal expenditure, liquidity, consumption and investment expand faster than labour supply, domestic production, infrastructure and institutional capacity can respond, the pressure does not disappear. It shows up elsewhere—in prices, wages, imports, foreign-exchange demand, execution bottlenecks and declining purchasing power.
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Managing scarcity required fiscal discipline, resource mobilisation and rebuilding productive capacity. Managing abundance requires a different kind of discipline: expenditure sequencing, liquidity management, stronger monetary transmission, deeper financial markets, greater institutional capacity and deliberate expansion of the economy’s absorptive capacity.
This is why I increasingly view Guyana’s oil transformation not simply as a resource boom, ??? ?? ? ????????????? ?????? ??????????—???? ???????? ???????? ?? ???????? ?????????.
In fact, this is increasingly becoming the essence of the core hypothesis that my PhD dissertation intends to interrogate: ??????? ??????’? ????????, ?????? ??? ?????????-?????? ???????????? ??? ??????? ???????????? ?? ???? ??????????? ?????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ???????.
We have accumulated considerable experience managing scarcity. ??? ???????? ????????-?????????? ???? ?? ???? ?????????? ??? ?????????? ?? ??????? ?? ?????? ??????? ????????? ?? ???????? ?????????.