Tell Guyanese where their money went 

Mar 21, 2025 Editorial, News

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Editorial…

Kaieteur News- The Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GYEITI) has among its recommendations to members one that is as clear as daylight.  From its 2022 report, it reads: “The IA (Independent Administrator) recommends that the MSG (Multi-Stakeholder Group) obtains information on how extractive industry revenues are utilised for the advancement of national development goals including the Sustainable Developmental Goals.”

This recommendation was seen to be of such importance that it was repeated from the GYEITI’s 2021 report.  On what was the money spent?  How many millions were spent on different projects, each of which should be identified?  What could be more transparent than that, serve to emphasize how much the government is committed to deal in a straight, clear, and trustworthy way with the precious funds of the nation?

The PPPC Government has gone the other way.  Instead of straight disclosures of how the millions of US dollars withdrawn from the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) are being spent, the shady has been the norm (“national development priorities”). Instead of the clear, through specifics, on the utilisation of natural resource revenues, there has been the murky (“national development priorities”).  And when the government has had opportunities to manifest that it is trustworthy, through the highest levels of transparency, it selected the too clever by far (“national development priorities”).

A worker collects his or her paycheck (or bonus) and when it is gone informs the family that it was spent on improving the home, nothing else.  The PPPC Government has repeatedly withdrawn US millions, billions in Guyana dollars, from the NRF, and the most that it does is insult Guyanese by telling them the money is being spent on “national development priorities.”  If one is looking for vagueness with millions/billions taken to the extreme, then the government has outdone itself.

The creative schemers in the government outdid themselves in their efforts to outsmart citizens.  When the NRF law came into effect, one of the two requirements relative to oil money withdrawals was that it be used to fund “national development priorities.”  We think that government planners and arrangers had already premediated on how they were going to withdraw, spend, and pull the wool over the eyes of Guyanese.  We think that the vagueness of “national development priorities” provided the best cover for the PPPC Government, which explains why leading spokespeople for it are so pleased with themselves.  They get to reassure the people that their money is being spent on the country, while countless possible skullduggeries go on with the hundreds of US millions withdrawn at steady intervals.  For emphasis, “national development priorities” represent the best camouflage possible.

With reason, it could be said that some tricky thinking was at work in the drafting of the NRF bill that is now the law.  Now, if government leaders were genuinely committed to transparency with oil money, there was a choice.  Every effort would have been made to take the NRF law and its “national development priorities” provision and use that to generate standards, specifics, and practices that deliver openness itself before Guyanese.  This is what the law states, this is how much more the government has done. Accordingly, there are no thoughts of underhandedness, no sense that there are any financial con games at work.  The other choice was for the government to stick stubbornly to the exact letter of its thoughtful concoction of “national development priorities” and do no more.  To the detriment of the people, the government decided that its own interests are served with the tightness of “national development priorities” and not a word more.  Nobody outside of senior government insiders knows the real truths and the likely real shenanigans that operate beneath that slippery provision in the NRF law.

While there should be no difficulty with accounting for how oil money is spent, the government has erected imaginary roadblocks.  It can’t be done is the cry.  This is deviousness and foolishness taken to levels not seen before.  Meanwhile, the PPPC Government congratulates itself on taking Guyanese for yet another ride, and being allowed to get away with its nifty footwork. Guyanese have a right to know what their money is being spent on, how much of it, and when that was done.

(Tell Guyanese where their money went)

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• Editorial, Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, PPPC Government, US millions

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