President Ali announces sweeping measures to strengthen Guyana’s financial system

President Irfaan Ali announced a slew of measures aimed at strengthening Guyana’s financial system, with a specific focus on financial and banking services and the foreign currency market.

The Head of State convened a meeting today with several stakeholders of the financial sector, including the Governor of the Bank of Guyana (BoG), Dr Gobin Ganga, the Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Godfrey Statia, and representatives of the various commercial banks operating in Guyana.

During the meeting, he outlined nine key measures to guide commercial banks in maintaining the stability of Guyana’s financial sector.

The implementation of these nine Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is designed to tighten foreign exchange controls, improve transparency, and prevent abuse of the system, especially in the context of rising demand and capital flight.

President Ali noted that an interagency Task Force, including technical support, was convened to comprehensively review the increase in demand for foreign exchange. He noted too that his Government has made several interventions over the last three years in the foreign currency sector.

The President highlighted the surge in foreign exchange allocations provided to the Central Bank of Guyana.

In 2024, US$332m was injected into the economy to meet foreign exchange demand. This has risen to US$1.2bn in 2025, with an additional US$160m still pending. He also highlighted a sharp escalation in credit card usage as part of his broader concerns about foreign exchange outflows.

In 2023, total credit card clearance stood at approximately US$91.3m. That figure surged to US$347.5m in 2024, marking a nearly fourfold increase.

“We’ve also noticed massive growth in credit card transactions,” the President stated.

“We’re now examining that growth, profiling that growth to see whether personal credit cards are used to clear business transactions and in what volume, because this is important for us to understand.”

He said that in 2025, the amount has already reached close to US$252m, signalling continued high-volume activity.

To this extent, he highlighted nine measures aimed at enhancing the existing procedures and introducing new safeguards to strengthen Guyana’s foreign exchange system.

The measures include:

1) Any request for forex by any customer to commercial banks for the importation of goods to Guyana would require the customer to provide the commercial bank with a copy of the commercial invoice on the basis of which the commercial bank may release the foreign exchange to the said customer.

2) Any customer that submits a request for foreign exchange upon the arrival of the goods in Guyana will have to submit a copy of the invoice and Bill of Laden to GRA. The documents will also have to be submitted to the commercial bank for verification.

3) If a customer fails to submit the certified copy of the invoice and Bill of Laden, as well as a GRA compliance to the commercial bank, the Bank shall not release the request for the foreign exchange.

4) The commercial banks will submit copies of the Bill of Laden and the commercial invoice to the Bank of Guyana for further verification. This will be supported by the setting up of a system at the BoG where all records from the commercial banks, GRA and other relevant stakeholders will be reconciled.

5) To monitor the use of credit cards more closely, each commercial bank will have to ensure that personal credit cards are used strictly for personal transactions and not for the settling of business obligations.

6) In cases where there are related party transactions and inflated invoicing for capital flights (the rapid outflow of capital and liquid assets from a country), the entities found responsible will be penalised.

7) In cases where foreign exchange in the form of currency is being taken out of Guyana, the source of the currency will have to be declared.

8) Entities registered in Guyana under the local content laws that are providing services for the oil and gas sector must maintain a local bank account in which the foreign currency earnings shall be remitted into the said bank account. The local content legislation will be amended to reflect this.

9) A single window post-clearing system will be established at the Central Bank, through which reconciliation and prior transactions between GRA, commercial banks and the Central Bank will be completed before new requests are facilitated.

During the meeting, the representatives of the commercial banks expressed their support for these measures, which they acknowledged will ease some of the difficulties they currently face.

Minister of Public Service, Government Efficiency and Implementation, the Honourable Zulfikar Ally, was also part of the meeting.