-Min. Singh on BBC World Service Show
Guyana was in the international spotlight earlier this week when the BBC World Service brought its ‘World Questions’ Programme here, with the cost of living in an oil-rich economy emerging as one of the first major issues.
The programme was chaired by veteran British journalist Johnny Dymond. During the segment, Senior Minister with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, assured that the government is working assiduously to provide both short and long term benefits to the people.
“We are trying to achieve at least two main objectives. The first is to improve the lives of all of the Guyanese people in a tangible way in the shortest possible time, improving people’s lives, immediately. Addressing the short term and very legitimate imperative, we have to ensure, first of all, that we protect the resilience of the growth of our economy, its sustainability for the long term, and we have to ensure that we invest in the things that matter for the long term competitiveness, long term resilience and long term well being, and in the long term prosperity,” he explained.
Businessman and Private Sector Representative , Clinton Urling, who also appeared on the platform, noted that wealth redistribution is a structural issue that policymakers will have to grapple with.
“It’s not unique to Guyana. The challenge from our politicians and our policymakers, I should say, is to ensure that we have some mechanisms in place where those funds or the revenues that are being generated are equitably distributed or redistributed to the most vulnerable in our society, so that there’s prosperity and progress for the majority of Guyanese,” he said.
Budget 2026 contained numerous measures aimed at alleviating cost of living, ranging from increases to pension public assistance and business support grants to the ‘Because we Care’, newborn and adult cash grant.