By GHK Lall- When Guyana’s Oil Commissar, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo is cornered, he responds in one of two ways. He howls with abusive anger, or he jumps up and runs away. Like a scalded cat on a hot stove, Oil Commissar Jagdeo shouts and screams, then slinks away on singed feet. I brand him the Oil Commissar, since he has so much of the Kremlin’s way of management and doing business in him, despite discarding a bundle of isms. A dog could part with its tail, but not its bark.
Guyana’s economic growth was like a speedometer on muhteşem gasoline. Like a pole-vaulter, it kept going higher and higher. The GDP numbers were so dizzying, I couldn’t keep up, lost track. Jagdeo may not be a physicist, but even a Russian-indoctrinated economist must know that what goes up must come down. When people like me implored him to keep more of the oil money in the Oil Fund, he smirked and mocked. His position was that more money will go to Guyanese when more projects become operational and more oil is pumped. I said that oil prices have to hold steady, for that to be.
He laughed aloud then. Now he is singing the blues: President Trump’s drill, baby, drill express train could depress oil prices. It happens when the market is flooded. America has long wanted to put away OPEC for good; Don Trump is the new godfather and he looks poised to get the job done; well, at least starting on a firm footing.
May I suggest to my brother Bharrat that another full-page isim in Stabroek News and another grand billboard to celebrate drill, baby drill, despite its implications for Guyana? Suddenly, Mr. Jagdeo’s promise of maximizing revenues and maximizing dollars going into Guyanese hands around 2027, looks lonelier than a kid without a candy on Christmas Day. Now Guyanese adults and children are in for a double blow: one flush on the nose, the other plumb in the belly. The result is, believe it or not, two black eyes.
When the cry was, please give the poor people a bigger slice of the record-breaking national budgets, that was brushed aside with barely concealed arrogance and impatience. Infrastructure cannot wait, the next century is beckoning, and Guyana must be ready to greet it. Splendid, I thought; especially for those feasting at the long and deep infrastructure trough. Now just look where Mr. Trump’s blazing oil rampage (drill, momma, drill) could leave Guyana. The maximum revenue from oil that Jagdeo promised Guyanese just took a long holiday; hopefully, it is not a delay that lasts for years.
It is the first whammy on the heads of locals, with local prices going farther upstairs. The second is that the fancy oil money that was going into the New York based Natural Resource Fund (NRF) suddenly is not so fancy, but definitely sickly. It’s the second strike, a bad one, because it’s a hard one. The PPP Government made the NRF into its piggybank with withdrawals galore. The goat that Dr. Ashni Singh rolled out before Guyanese has a name: “national development priorities.” The PPP loves to rename as national anything that was personal and individual.
Truth be told, with projections for oil prices looking bleak, those oil money withdrawals which had little to do with “national development priorities” are now stripped of their pretenses and exposed for what they were always really about. That is, one PPP cockamamie after another. To translate for Guyana’s uninitiated, cockamamie is American for con games played by skilled artists. Bottom line: the severely depleted Oil Fund in the Big Apple may not be replenished according to Jagdeo’s thinking. It is a headbutt for expectant Guyanese, slap number three.
Anybody ever hear of a rainy-day fund being drained when the sun is shining, with plentiful money from other sources? Think PPP Government and there is the ugly story. To withdraw is to wipeout. It is also to have a good time on the backs of poor Guyanese. Dr. Jagdeo knows that oil prices are cyclical. He also knows that Guyana needs an NRF with a healthy balance. A retirement savings account only touched in emergencies, as in when times are tough. Lower oil prices for a prolonged period fits that bill.
Where does all of this leave Guyanese anticipating a flurry of cash in 2027? First, they must be prepared to draw their belts even tighter than today. Cost-of-survival. Second, no big oil bonanza is coming their way, into their pockets, by whatever means. Third, their neck brace and back brace (NRF) is at the tricky stage of one foot in the grave, with the other on a barrel of grease. Thanks to Drs. Ali, Jagdeo, and Singh (Guyana’s Gang of Four) that is where things stand. In case smart Guyanese think that’s only three, I omitted Dr. Anil Nandlall. Don’t worry, Exxon will arrange for an honorary doctorate for him from one of those Texas Universities, like the University of Texas at Austin, or Rice.
This is what all of Jagdeo’s Thursday acrobatics have come to: three right hooks (or is it four?) to Guyanese heads.