Pres. Ali jumps off track when asked about windfall revenue from oil

May 09, 2026 News

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(Kaieteur News) – President Irfaan Ali was recently interviewed by Baker Institute – a think-tank located on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas – about how Guyana is managing the population’s expectations in light of windfall revenues following recent events in the Middle East and Russia.

The head-of-state in response embarked on broad discussion ranging from AI, digitisation and the approach by his government to invest in infrastructure, free health care and old age pensions.

See below the question posed to President Ali and his response.

Question– Recent events in Middle East and Russia is bringing windfall to your country. How do you manage the expectations of the population? How do you combine prudence with macroeconomic stability and the different dimensions?

Answer: “I want to start from the premise of your question and that is a windfall because of what is happening and we have to be careful about classifying this as a windfall because we live in a global system. We don’t live on an island by ourselves. Whilst we see increase in revenue from crude oil, we also see massive increase in everything else. Global transportation, fertiliser, grains, insurance. Every single aspect, food prices, pharmaceuticals because some of the important ingredient for pharmaceuticals. You will see the impact on the speed of AI and digitization when we see the impact on the production of semiconductors.

So, this crisis is multifaceted and yes, you will get some additional revenue but you would have to net off that against the increased cost, increased prices and the opportunities missed because investments would also be redirected to rebuilding and we have not calculated that in the matrix as yet-how much investment will go back to rebuilding where those investments would be made mostly. Whether countries will now try to shore up their military capacity and capability. Whether countries will try to build new systems to avoid drones, what are the new critical infrastructure routes that will be created, whether its maritime routes, who are the new strategic partners that will be integrated together. These are all big questions that this conflict has opened up that we will have to manoeuvre.

“So yes, additional revenue, windfall I would not go so far because you have to balance this off.”

This brings me to the question of additional revenue and we have Exxon here in the room too. This allows us to deal with the cost bank at a faster pace. So we also have to match that with the expectations of Exxon in moving to a new development. How we add new cost to the bank, but how we deal with the cost bank so we can get the additional revenue to come into the system to help the development and deal with the expectations and this is the complexity of the message.

When people wake up every morning and see the headlines that you are flushed with money, it drives a certain expectation. That expectation if not managed and if governed by kneejerk reaction can lead resource curse. It can also lead to creating a society that is not built on sacrifice and hard work. That is not built on the value of labour and innovation, the value of ideas, the value of creativity and we have to avoid that.

That is why we are investing in tools and mechanisms that will optimise the potential of our people, give them a high quality of life and open opportunities for them. That is why the local content legislation is so important in developing as much local opportunities from the sector as possible.

One of the differences here is that our development is deep-water so whilst you may have thousands of persons on an FPSO at deep-sea, the population will hardly see that. They don’t full hotel rooms or apartments and that’s the big difference. Therefore, we have to create the type of infrastructure and model that will allow the other aspects of the economy to showcase how the revenue unlocks opportunities for our people.

Take for example hotels, in the last four or five years, we have 14 hotels, international branded hotels completed or under construction, nearing completion. We have to ensure that those hotels are meaningful that is why we have to build out an orange economy that creates demand so this is where the revenue and the model becomes critical, increasing pensions, whether its old age pension, free university education – all of it free, free health care. Investing in a world class health care system, world class infrastructure that allows your value and your property to go up. We have property values that went up by thousands of percentage points. That increases your net value, unlock financial capital liquidity for you to start a new business.

So, these are all spinoff effects of the strategic investments that we are making to create an enabling environment for prosperity and wealth creation but managing that expectation is not easy, especially in a world where as some people classify, we are in an information pandemic.

If you look at social media, the speed at which information flows, every time the Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance by law must declare all the revenue that comes to the Natural Resource Fund within 30 days. Every time that declaration is made is a national headline but the expectation that comes out of those headlines makes it sometimes very difficult for the policymaking environment because whilst you make long-term decisions, you have to always understand that the short-term interest and expectation must be examined.

And we are in the business of policy making but we are also politicians who were elected and it will be foolish not to address these challenges but it is a responsibility of addressing it, keeping in mind the long-term sustainability of the country.

That is why we prefer to invest in opportunities that create wealth, invest in the development of the human capital and infrastructure, social safety nets that allow our people not to lose their own capacity, to be innovative, hard workers and to be builders rather than waiters, waiters for opportunity, waiter for a cash grant, waiter for some cash transfer. It’s not sustainable.

We don’t know ultimately where the price of oil and gas will rest but we know it will not be where it is today. We also know that Guyana is blessed because of the cost of recovery. Our break-even point is much more efficient than many other producers which allow us to be in the top tier of development and developers – that’s an added advantage that will work in our favour in an oil-producing world beyond 2060 because then efficiency and production comes into play and efficiency and production will least impact on the environment becomes a major indicator of success and who will be able to stay in the industry and that is what positions Guyana ahead of all its competitors and that is what positions our investors in the best possible manner for the long term and I’m sure they know this.”

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• Baker Institute, Cost Recovery, Guyana Oil, oil, President Irfaan Ali, windfall

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