A GBJ Special Report by Dr. Ramesh Gampat. Since 2020, Guyana has become the fastest-growing economy in the world — and one of the slowest-changing. This paper keeps score: what researchers and institutions proposed, what the government adopted, modified or rejected, and what has actually happened to exports, foreign exchange, human capital and procurement.
Guyana is short of foreign exchange in the middle of the largest foreign-exchange windfall in its history. Counting where the dollars go will never tell us why. Uses are not sources: the shortage is structural, not merely distributional.
The authors of the 64/80 paradox answer Rory Fraser, Errol Benn and the readers who pressed them on why the failures they measured outlast governments — and argue that an independent audit body is a political device, not a technocratic one.
Rory Fraser’s study of land tenure, forestry enforcement and the public service reaches the same conclusion as Gampat and Mahabir’s 64/80 paradox by a different road, and asks why the failures they measure outlast changes of government.
Drawing on a book-length comparative study of eighteen countries, Ramesh Gampat and Minakshi Mahabir document what they call the 64/80 paradox: Guyana out-invests 64 per cent of its comparators in health and education, yet 80 per cent of them obtain better human capital outcomes. Efficiency deficits, inequality and governance failure explain the gap — and the oil window for closing it will not stay open for ever.