Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh yesterday urged former Minister Carl Greenidge, who held the finance portfolio under successive PNC administrations for nine years, from 1983 to 1992, to desist from distorting history, referring to Greenidge’s recent forays into the letter columns of the daily newspapers as an attempt to revise history. The minister stated that Greenidge should account to the Guyanese people for the performance of the domestic economy for the full duration of his ministerial tenure, instead of trying to rewrite his own fantasised and abbreviated version of history, a version that conveniently ignores the factual realties that obtained in Guyana during the period that he superintended the economy, and a version that is replete with selective self-serving recollections.
Minister Singh pointed out that the domestic economy sank to its lowest depths during the period that Greenidge served as finance minister. He cited Greenidge’s own words in his 1992 budget speech, when he described the imbalances facing the domestic economy as “high and rising levels of inflation; extreme and damaging exchange rate volatility; the loss of foreign exchange reserves; a growing gap between the official and parallel market rates for foreign exchange, and an increasingly virulent and ubiquitous parallel market; and declining investment, production and job opportunities”.
One year before that, in his 1991 budget speech, and well into implementation of his much vaunted Economic Recovery Programme, Greenidge described the domestic economy as facing “two fundamental problems … severe fiscal imbalance and severe external disequilibrium … there was also uneven economic growth and a decline in GDP”.
During the period 1984 to 1992, the Guyana dollar depreciated from G$3 to US$1 to G$125 to US$1, a fact that Minister Singh described as “perhaps the most striking symbol of the economic decline of that era”.
Minister Singh stated, “Mr. Greenidge clearly wants to be remembered only for the Economic Recovery Programme, but he should stop pretending that he became Finance Minister in 1989, when that programme commenced, and he should account to the people of Guyana for the economic policies implemented and economic outcomes achieved during the full period of his stewardship, starting from 1983.
“His own words paint a compelling picture of the tragic economic episode that corresponded with the duration of his ministerial tenure,” Dr. Singh said.
Minister Singh pointed out that the domestic economy sank to its lowest depths during the period that Greenidge served as finance minister. He cited Greenidge’s own words in his 1992 budget speech, when he described the imbalances facing the domestic economy as “high and rising levels of inflation; extreme and damaging exchange rate volatility; the loss of foreign exchange reserves; a growing gap between the official and parallel market rates for foreign exchange, and an increasingly virulent and ubiquitous parallel market; and declining investment, production and job opportunities”.
One year before that, in his 1991 budget speech, and well into implementation of his much vaunted Economic Recovery Programme, Greenidge described the domestic economy as facing “two fundamental problems … severe fiscal imbalance and severe external disequilibrium … there was also uneven economic growth and a decline in GDP”.
During the period 1984 to 1992, the Guyana dollar depreciated from G$3 to US$1 to G$125 to US$1, a fact that Minister Singh described as “perhaps the most striking symbol of the economic decline of that era”.
Minister Singh stated, “Mr. Greenidge clearly wants to be remembered only for the Economic Recovery Programme, but he should stop pretending that he became Finance Minister in 1989, when that programme commenced, and he should account to the people of Guyana for the economic policies implemented and economic outcomes achieved during the full period of his stewardship, starting from 1983.
“His own words paint a compelling picture of the tragic economic episode that corresponded with the duration of his ministerial tenure,” Dr. Singh said.
The economy in that time had collapse great under the PNC and now that we have a stable one he is try to come with his crap.
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