Oil Fund expected 2026 intake

Feb 04, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – The much-watched Guyana Natural Resource Fund (Oil Fund) is expected to be boosted by US$2.8 billion in 2026. The Oil Fund needs every penn7 that it can get, given its current ragged state, thanks to the chronic extractions of the scheming PPP Govt. ‘National development priorities’ are the watchwords, the symphony, that the carousers and celebrators in the government sing.

If I can withdraw at will almost all of the Oil Fund of the people and not be forced to give a true accounting of the cash drained off, then it would be party time, too. If ever there was a Hard Truth, that’s one. Here are others.

The US$2.8 billion projected as Guyana’s share of royalties and profits from its oil is guaranteed to be as good as gone. It is only early February, but that guarantee is made from now. There is precedent, with written record to match. What has the PPP Govt executed since the very early years of Guyana’s oil era, its own return back to the corridors and controls of power since 2020?

It has raided the Oil Fund. Before that it fixed the Oil Fund law, so that the party’s leadership cabals can use the billions in a New York bank for pet projects that always have loads of built-in riches for insiders, and with the bonus of zero transparency, zero accountability. Put a dollar in the hands of a rogue or conman, and be prepared to say goodbye to it. Put a billion US dollars on the table before serial thieves and pathological fixers, and that’s the end of that national booty plundered by political pirates, who call themselves patriots. Well, that’s what has happened, hasn’t it?

Year after year, since the arrival of this precious global commodity, a rare liquid of a compelling kind, has intensified the addiction of PPP Govt plotters and hustlers. They cannibalise the people’s Oil Fund limb by limb to feed a voracious addiction. I call this rainy day, emergency, contingency, money the Oil Fund, so that the ordinary Guyanese man and woman can feel it more closely, and claim it as their own. Natural Resource Fund is a big and beautiful thing, but sort of an abstract creation for rank-and-file Guyanese. Oil Fund gives them a sense of having a stake, a deposit book, some level of belonging. It is this Oil Fund with which PPP Govt planners and visionaries had the cunning to raise its withdrawal ceiling. More Oil Fund money taken out; more public cash going in private pockets.

To add acid to Guyanese trials, they are told about how much good has been done for them (with their money), and how much more they could be in line for (with their money), if they conduct themselves acceptably. A middle finger should be the response. I encourage all Guyanese to look beyond $100,000 cash grants and a quintet of punishing national budgets (may be a sextet), and check for themselves where the real money from oil went. Into whose hands, into whose designer purses, and custom-made jackets, and the kinds of institutions that can accommodate that amount of money (and business) in a formidably impenetrable way.

The best part about all of this is that there is no accounting. No books, no records, no one saying anything about how a single oil dollar received has been spent. Can’t be done, an impossibility. Only the most stupidest (yes, double superlative applies) of bandits compiles a notebook to track his looting, then is so slack, as to make it accessible and available for public discovery and scrutiny. The history of Guyana’s Oil Fund deposits and withdrawals is the best evidence. Simply follow the trail of both in the last five years. The 2025 Oil Fund was skimmed to the bone, like past years. Why should 2026 Oil Fund collections be any different? Who is there in the PPP Govt that is principled enough to take a stand and break the addiction? His first challenge would be to break his own addiction.

The addiction to binge borrowing. The addiction to draining the Oil Fund. The addiction to siphoning off huge fractions (billions) from the loans and PPP Govt-induced hemorrhaging of Guyana’s Oil Fund. The addiction is public, now uncontrollable throughout the PPP. The 2026 oil revenue intake of US$2.8 billion is gone. Guaranteed. Guyanese: Watch the money disappear.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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GHK Lall, Guyana Oil, Natural Resource, oil fund, PPP

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