Private Sector too dependent on Govt spending – Norton

Presidential Candidate of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Aubrey Norton has contended that the private sector is too dependent on government spending and hinted that if elected, his administration will correct that situation.

Norton made the statement at the party’s manifesto launch today.

While speaking about the APNU’s plans for the country if it wins the 2025 polls, Norton raised questions about the independence and resilience of the private sector, particularly to meet the challenges of the nonoil economy. He indicated that the government investments into the nonoil economy is too high.

“When we examined what the current government was doing, we saw the extent to which its spending diminished the role of the private sector as the engine of growth. The spending by the government rose from 39 percent in 2021 to 83 percent of non-oil GDP in 2024,” Norton said.

As such, he called into question “the preparedness of the private sector to respond to exogenous shocks to the economy. We also worry about how much we can spend on the private sector for product and process innovation if it allows government spending to serve as its market.”

Norton’s comments come on the heels of APNU candidate, attorney Dexter Todd blaming the private sector for the party’s failures in government from 2015 to 2020.

Todd told a public meeting in Georgetown that the private sector “shut down the economic activities in this country. So, the only thing that remained was taxes to run this country. And that is why when you see that the APNU… wanted to give public servants more and you wanted to do more in terms of infrastructure. One of the things that you had to go back to was to see if you could get a little more tax money.” Todd further contended that those who “own the businesses and have the economic power” were not aligned with the APNU and its then coalition partner in government, the Alliance for Change (AFC).

During a side interview today, Norton was asked how an APNU government envisions working with the private sector in light of those seemingly antagonist remarks from his party’s candidate.

In response, Norton made it clear that he fully agrees with Todd’s position. The APNU presidential candidate argued that his party would nevertheless have a cordial working with the private sector because of its plans to reduce corporate tax.

“We will engage the private sector as mature people, we will raise with them the issues we think need to be raised, we will listen to their concern and we will work out an approach with them…Because you disagree with somebody, it doesn’t follow that there is tension,” he said.

Additionally, during the side interview, Norton reiterated that “the private sector has to get most of its business from government” and committed to changing this.

Norton’s contentions are reminiscent of the position of the former APNU+AFC government led by then President David Granger who had argued that ‘rice is private business’, indicating that the problems in the industry are not the government’s concerns.

“It is a private enterprise largely,” Granger had asserted when asked by the media about issues affecting the industry in 2015.