Pres. Ali commits to make details of spending oil money public

Feb 14, 2021 News

By Shikema Dey

President Irfaan Ali.

Kaieteur News – President Irfaan Ali in his maiden address to the National Assembly has made a commitment to publish the particulars of all revenue and expenditure of Guyana’s oil sector in the Official Gazette.
This, he said, will allow ordinary Guyanese citizens to track the transactions to better hold government accountable for every cent earned from the industry and for every cent that is spent.
President Ali relayed that to accomplish that mandate, legislation will be introduced to make the Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance and the Finance Secretary responsible for publishing the details.
And if this is not done, they would be “punished severely under the law.”
“The revenues from the sector, like all other sectors, are the peoples’ money; they are entitled to know how much money is earned, how much is spent and on what it is spent,” he said.
The Head of State revealed too that he has explicitly stated to his government that “transparency and accountability” are the utmost fundamental principles on which he expects them to conduct themselves.
“We are the custodians of the people’s assets,” the President said, “and we will account to them for all that we do.”
Added to that, the President said that to hold oil companies operating in the Stabroek Block accountable, and to verify production and other expenditures, government is in the process of building audit capacity.
So far, Guyana has only 10 officers from the Guyana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) Petroleum Revenue Department involved in the auditing of costs incurred from the oil sector, even as billions in bills continue to pile on.
The 2019 Auditor General report outlined that since the unit’s initial establishment back in September 2019, it boasted 15 officers but it was noted that only 10 of them were directly involved in the execution of the audits.
It was explained that GRA employed a strategy of training officers from various audit functions to build a repository of necessary skills and competences which would be mobilised and influenced by the demands of the industry.
Those audit officers were said to have benefitted from multiple training sessions held by the Office of Technical Assistance and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to build capacity to ‘Administer Domestic taxes within the Oil and Gas Sector’ and ‘conduct Cost Recovery Audits’ from March 2017 to July 2019.
Such a small team may not be enough as Guyana has billions in oil related expenses to audit from petro-giant ExxonMobil and Stabroek Block partners, affiliates and sub-contractors.

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