GRA functioning on one foot

Nov 23, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial…

Kaieteur News – When the crucial Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is forced to operate with handicaps, that can only be to this country’ detriment. Two years after sounding the alarm, the GRA still finds itself close to half-staffed in the vital Petroleum Revenue Department (PRD), which has its hands full with tax oversight and related matters. Working without being anywhere near to a full human resource complement in any entity would be a cause for concern among senior executives. In an oil rich country, where the expenses and daily production rates continue to balloon skyward, and the GRA is stuck where it is relative to staffing must qualify as nothing short of a crisis.

Skilled manpower is at unworkable levels in the PRD of the GRA. Skilled manpower is hard to find, and can be way too expensive to obtain when located. This has been part of the GRA’s troubles, one which Commissioner-General Statia had warned about in 2023, and which the government had promised to address. Two years later, the GRA’s human resource problems in the PRD seem to have gotten worse, not better. The challenges of the GRA are not those of this leading State agency alone, but one with many national implications.

How does a country sitting on top of a new business, its biggest, begin to get a grasp of what is happening with it, when it is so terribly short of the types of qualified and experienced personnel that it needs? How does the agency in charge of overseeing Guyana’s oil business cope with its responsibility for petroleum tax audits, VAT refund verification, cost recovery assessments, appeals, debt management, and risk analysis for the oil industry when it is so people poor, and skills deficient? When the GRA is operating at close to full strength, with competent and credible staff in the right roles, it can then deliver satisfactorily on most of what falls within its purview. In view of where it languishes, with the recruitment horizon looking just as bleak, there is the likelihood that many areas in its list of responsibilities have to be done on the run. In addition, there is an equal or greater likelihood that some areas have to be given short thrift, due to the agency’s chronic shortage of manpower.

More oil projects are being approved, and more oil production platforms are going live. Only recently, the news was that exploration expenses submitted by ExxonMobil are breaking new multibillion dollar barriers. Meanwhile, the GRA is stuck in first gear, and struggles to pull its weight relative to the kind of comprehensive and robust oversight that Guyana’s exploding oil sector calls for. One obvious deficit that the GRA faces is that it cannot compete in the skilled labor market. The caliber of people that the GRA needs so urgently can be found, and commonsense would suggest that they are mostly outside of Guyana. To get them to be part of the GRA team would require the best in incentives, through a total compensation package that could send the agency’s budget into the stratosphere. In other words, a package that has a very attractive base remuneration, plus an array of other benefits, all of which is sure to easily run into six figures, and in US dollars.

The issue before government decisionmakers is whether they are prepared to deal in compensation numbers that would be nothing short of revolutionary by Guyana’s standards. Commissioner General Statia has to be pulling his hair out of his head, as the GRA loses ground, and certain in the knowledge that the demanding circumstances of his stressed organization call for radical measures. To be cheap is to continue along the same heavy staff shortage path, with ExxonMobil given what is tantamount to a greenlight to take full advantage of the shaky condition in which Guyana’s PRD has been stuck. Think of the lost opportunities for Guyana. In trying to save recruitment dollars, there could be those unflagged oil sector developments that cost this country much more than it would have had to pay to sign highly skilled workers. One thing is certain: this GRA/PRD personnel situation cannot remain so, if Guyana is to get more revenue from its oil.

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ExxonMobil, GRA, likelihood, PRD, VAT

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