Promised electricity bill reduction

Jun 25, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – The PPPC Government’s chief policymaker, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, has repeatedly promised half-priced electricity to energy-challenged Guyanese. In turn, Guyanese have longed for both an electricity supply that they can be confident in and the prospect of their energy bills being reduced by 50 percent. Who wouldn’t want something like that? The roadblock being encountered is that the chief policymaker’s promise continues to be stretched and twisted to such an extent that those hanging on his words question when (if ever) they will see that half-price cut. This year is out, and it should be sometime in 2026, according to Jagdeo.

The problem for Jagdeo and the PPPC Government is not so much that a promise was made. Politicians make those all the time, with god on their lips and the most solemn of faces, only to fall when it is time for them to deliver. Jagdeo is the best Guyanese have experienced so far, for making big promises, and then either not producing, or what he presents to the nation doesn’t hold up. It is how he has held this country hostage since he has been in pivotal positions in government. Flashy promises have been made by him that light up the moment, only for his dismal record of non-delivery to take over. Two of the more prominent ones we remind taxpayers and the hopefuls in Guyana have been the modernised Skeldon sugar factory that dug a multibillion-dollar crater in this country’s treasury. Guyanese are still waiting for the benefits that Jagdeo promised would come from that project. The other is the APNU+AFC signed 2016 ExxonMobil oil contract. He made big promises before the world about all that he was going to do with that vile oil contract, only to walk back his words and leave Guyanese hanging. The hopefuls have since lost faith in him and his promises.

It is human to err, but Jagdeo, as Finance Minister, as president, as vice president, and as chief oil and gas policymaker (and in countless other areas) has compiled an inhuman record of erring and failing. Promises are easy to make, and politicians of the calibre of Jagdeo are among the sharpest at making them. To retain some level of credibility, some have to be proved, and the best proof is in making good on what was sold, committed to the people. This is a challenge for us at this paper, because we want to give and have given Jagdeo some space to operate, to prove himself, only for him to disappoint again and again. The Wales Gas-to-Energy and its much-watched and heavily anticipated 50 percent reduction in electricity bills must rank as such a disappointment, a huge one. Due to cost-of-living pressures and the fact that electricity charges have such a cascading effect on the prices of other goods and services, this is how much Jagdeo’s 50 percent reduction promise matters. In so many respects, he has become that sun which never shines amid rising, suffocating floodwaters.

According to the chief policymaker, if the government were to move ahead and cut electricity bills by half, the opposition would make hay out of that since this is an election year. This is standard Jagdeo, where the rationales for his failures somehow always end up on the heads of the PNC and AFC. When he wants to race ahead with a policy decision, he doesn’t care about who objects or who uses that for political gain. He simply throws aside restraint and respect for processes and others, and powers ahead. Yet, there he was last week, all concerned about the political opposition’s reaction. He knows all too well that the enthusiastic response of Guyanese to the introduction of half-priced electricity would deliver such benefits that making a political (elections) issue out of it could very likely backfire on a carping opposition. In other words, it would be a winner for him and the PPPC at the September polls.

Having said the above, the real issue is whether this Wales project can deliver at the price that Jagdeo has touted. Or if it did, how long would that last, and what tricks does he have up his sleeve to shock Guyanese?

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Bharrat Jagdeo, Editorial, Electricity bill, Guyana Oil, Skeldon Sugar Factory

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