V-Pac’s Plan For Instant Equity In Land Ownership And Wealth Generation Copied By The PPP/C

The Government this week, using a minister with the Ministry of Housing and Water, Hon. Susan Rodrigues, launched an information campaign touting its new initiative to promote land ownership and the benefits that come from owning equity in real property. While V-PAC appreciates this new initiative, we wish to set the record straight. It’s our plan.

The PPP/C has been in power for more than two decades and during those years, the Government never offered this opportunity to the Guyanese people. Six weeks ago, V-PAC first published its Manifesto for the People. In that Manifesto we proposed: “One of the fastest and tried and true paths to acquiring financial security is through the ownership of land. We believe one of the best uses we can put our oil wealth to is the fostering of land ownership by all Guyanese.” The complete V-PAC proposal is set out for your review at the end of this document. In that proposal, V-PAC committed to the following:

• The development of planned and platted neighbourhoods complete with roads and full infrastructure;
• The offering of platted lots within these neighbourhoods to first-time buyers at a 60% discount to market value providing instant equity; and
• Leveraging the instant equity in the property to secure mortgages and other loans for the building of homes and commercial space.

The Government ignored this opportunity for more than 20 years. V-PAC set out its proposal in detail six weeks ago and now the Government is promoting this same idea of fostering land ownership with instant equity as if it were a great new concept. We agree. It is. It is ours. The PPP/C did not come up with this idea. They copied our idea and we have the Manifesto to prove it.

When we first published our Manifesto for the People, the PPP/C, through its media mouthpieces attempted to deride and dismiss the Manifesto as lacking substance and repeating tired tropes. Now that same PPP/C has adopted one of the major proposals set forth in it. And we have more.

Perhaps it is time to ask a hard question. Who do you want governing Guyana? A party mired in the past with no original ideas, or the party with the new ideas that others can only adopt?

For the record, our full proposal for fostering land ownership as it appears in V-PAC’s Manifesto for the People is set out below: