The reports and the President

Sep 08, 2026 Editorial, News

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(Kaieteur News) – President Irfaan Ali’s recent response to a Bloomberg’s warning that Guyana may already be showing symptoms of the dreaded oil curse is revealing, not because the President has disagreed with the assessment, but because of the manner in which he has chosen to do so.

Instead of confronting the substance of Bloomberg’s findings, the President has sought to diminish the report as a matter of “perception” and urged Guyanese to focus instead on the International Monetary Fund. For a government that repeatedly boasts of its commitment to transparency, accountability and good governance, the proper response to an uncomfortable international assessment should be to confront the evidence not to question the circumstances under which the journalist met the President.

Whether the Bloomberg journalist met Mr. Ali in a bar, a lobby, a conference room or under a mango tree is largely irrelevant to the central question. Are Guyana’s institutions strong enough to manage an unprecedented oil windfall in the national interest? That is the issue.

And on that question, Bloomberg did not simply pull an opinion out of thin air. The report measured Guyana against principles developed specifically to help resource-rich countries avoid the very catastrophe that has afflicted so many oil-producing nations. It found Guyana performing well in some areas, partially meeting others, but falling short in critical areas including transparent and competitive allocation of petroleum rights, local content participation, environmental, social and human rights standards, and the ability of the State to capture the full value of its natural resources.

Most troubling was the conclusion that Guyana’s biggest weaknesses are institutional.

That should have been a red flag to the President. Instead, it appears to have become an irritation. The President’s attempt to place Bloomberg’s assessment on one side and the IMF’s assessment on the other is also misleading. The IMF did not hand Guyana a certificate declaring: “Oil wealth safely managed. No further questions.”

Far from it. The same IMF assessment cited by the President called for stronger oil and gas audit systems and greater financial oversight and accountability. That is not a clean bill of health. That is a doctor telling the patient: you are doing reasonably well, but there are serious areas that require attention. And those concerns overlap significantly with Bloomberg’s warning. So why should Guyanese be forced to choose between Bloomberg and the IMF?

They should not. We should read both. We should listen to both. And more importantly, we should examine the evidence ourselves. Guyana is now producing billions of dollars in petroleum wealth. The country is borrowing heavily, spending at a breathtaking pace and transforming its physical landscape with massive infrastructure projects. The national debt is projected to rise to approximately US$10.3 billion by the end of 2026. The President may quite correctly point out that the IMF considers the debt sustainable. But sustainable does not mean risk-free. And economic growth does not automatically mean development. A country can have gleaming highways, impressive buildings, new hospitals, billions in foreign exchange and spectacular GDP growth and still be laying the foundations for an oil curse.

The oil curse is not defined simply by poverty. It is defined by what happens to institutions, democracy, accountability, productive sectors and public finances when enormous natural-resource revenues suddenly enter a relatively small economy. It happens when oil money becomes so powerful that institutions become weaker than the political machinery controlling the money.

It happens when contracts are opaque. It happens when citizens cannot determine whether the country is receiving the best possible value from its natural resources. It happens when public spending becomes politically attractive but economically inefficient. It happens when local businesses become dependent on government contracts rather than developing internationally competitive capacity. It happens when oil becomes the economy rather than a means of transforming the economy.

And it happens when those who raise uncomfortable questions are dismissed as negative, uninformed or motivated by perception. Guyana therefore needs less defensiveness and more scrutiny. The Bloomberg report should not be treated as gospel. Neither should the IMF report. Both are assessments. Both deserve examination.

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• Bloomberg’s warning, Editorial, oil curse, President Irfaan Ali

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