Budget 2025 will improve socioeconomic status of all Guyanese – Minister Teixeira

– dismisses opposition’s concerns; reminds them about their track record

The 2025 Budget will improve the socioeconomic status of all Guyanese through policies that will make life easier and lift their standards of living and wealth accumulation, paving the way for generations.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira made these remarks during her contributions to the budget debates in the National Assembly on Thursday.

Minister Teixeira said like previous budgets presented by the PPP/C, budget 2025 is laced with recommendations from many sections of society. This comes as a result of the government’s regular posture of engaging citizens in their communities.

“The changes in income tax are important. All these measures are to make life easier and less stressful for our people…The private sector, a critical component of any country moving forward, has all come forward in public statements supporting this budget and further saying they contributed to it…there is not one day in this country that the ministers are not out in the field. Thousands and thousands of community meetings are held,” she explained.

Minister Teixeira pointed to the gross mismanagement of the country that occurred under the APNU+AFC administration between 2015 to 2020.

Before leaving office in 2015, the minister said the gold reserves stood at US$15 billion. By 2019, the gold reserves had sunk to a meagre US$635 million.

“Giving subsidies without agriculture, housing and infrastructure, you are building on quicksand. And this goes back to exactly the same formula of 2015-2020,” the minister said.

She lambasted the opposition for criticising the good policies of the government instead of providing critical support necessary for the country’s development.

“Why must you be so tainted that everything you dissect? It’s okay to criticise and say ‘Do it better,’ but you give us such negative vibes. There is nothing good happening in this country according to you,” the governance minister stated.

Minister Teixeira concluded that Guyanese are experiencing progress in their individual lives and do not want to return to a place of regression.

“APNU+AFC needs to wake up and smell the roses…This country is moving and nobody is going to stop it. [The people] have gotten a taste of progress and movement. People have a taste for the future, hope [and optimism], and they wouldn’t want it reversed at all,” she explained.

Budget 2025 amounted to a whopping $1.382 Trillion, 20.6 per cent larger than last year’s fiscal package. This budget injects some $90 billion of disposable income into the pockets of Guyanese.