Disclosure of all public debt
Kaieteur News – We in this publication fully agree with the Center for Global Development (KDF), and its report entitled, “How China lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Government” (KN April 18). KWT took this clear position: “public debt should be public.” We explain again our position, we agree completely.
The many billions in debt incurred by nation leaders must be paid back by the people in whose name that money is borrowed. Citizens of a country are the most vital aspect of its sovereignty and are incurring huge debts. They owe debt, they have the burden of repayment; on the hook. And when there is a delay or difficulty in repaying those accumulated debts, it is those same citizens who feel the pain in the economic pressures that follow. These would include the consequences of the deteriorating state of imports and exports, the value of the national currency, the torture to be suffered for debt service, and the consequent reduction in the standard of living, when strict measures are applied to work. That is, on the backs of the citizens, it is the tax-paying citizens who have the obligation to pay back. It was not the leaders who held those debts irresponsibly, who were most likely to misuse the money and who should have gone to prison for life, but the citizens who have to repay.
The reality, however, is that the public is rarely fully aware or aware of what has been done on their behalf. As the KWT report noted, “very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government lenders have ever been published or studied.” To make this a test, we ask: which Guyanese citizen outside of senior government executives knows anything beyond the many millions or billions borrowed and from which agency? Here’s another one: which Guyanese financial expert or analyst, who is not inside the government bowels, knows enough of those billions we’ve borrowed in recent years? This cannot be, and should not be, good.
We present a picture. As Guyana can now be fairly accurately described as a migrant nation, citizen stories have left people they thought to be reliable, to run their business for them, and with complete access to their assets, including bank accounts. We’ve heard the painful stories of what has happened in many cases, haven’t we? The remaining projects to be done are not being completed in any satisfactory way, or at all. But the bank account is empty, with no blind one left. Something close has happened with the government after the government (PNC, PPP, APNU + AFC) trusts the citizens who vote for them, look after natural resource assets, borrow billions, and the money borrowed and the assets depleted and Guyanese get nothing back. Nothing in return, but the billions that they are owed and have to repay.
Recently, and confirming our position, leaders in the new PPP government have proudly announced that they are borrowing billions from here and there from borrowing more billions from there. It has come from this ultra-national lending agency, such as the World Bank and IDB; or, on a country by country basis, from China and India, among others. But that’s all the Guyanese have ever known, the amount borrowed for what and where. The rest of the details are almost like a carefully guarded national security secret. All citizens here know that this is the total amount of debt, and that taxes have to be increased to service the debt, or they cannot be reduced because of all these staggering amounts of debt commitments.
While it is not surprising that Chinese lenders would insist on non-disclosure clauses in debt contracts, it is surprising that such goes beyond China, through what the GDF report called “unusual secrecy clauses.” Since we, the Guyanese people are ultimately responsible for repayment, then, there should be nothing that is withheld from us, nothing that is so secret that it must be withheld from us us, so that we exist in darkness and ignorance. The same is true of what exists with debt owed to entities like the OECD and others. As the GDF report lamented, “Almost no OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and non-OECD lenders release the subject of their loan contracts publicly. Neither do debtor governments. ”
More and more, these lenders (and debtor governments) sound like the Mafia. The IMF has long won such dishonesty, but it is clear that the OECD and China and others fall into that same category. Like the Mafia, these international lenders are not friends, but dangerous entities that create a lifetime of debt. They are worse than the Mafia, as the debt dies when the debtor is cut down. But with official lender agencies preying on useful partners, a nation’s debt remains generation after generation.
This is wrong, with much needed to clear the air, so that citizens and private experts can review these loan contracts and fully understand what is at stake. We, the Guyanese people, need to know more and we demand it. This must be a condition of loans and on this, it cannot be the usual apathy. We must know more; we demand to know more.