By Roysdale Forde S.C- In yet another display of fiscal irresponsibility, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration has signalled its intent to press ahead with Budget 2026. On 6 November 2025 the Department of Public Information declared that “the government is moving ahead with preparations for Budget 2026 to ensure timely delivery on manifesto promises.” This terse statement, devoid of detail or timeline, is less an assurance of progress than a continuation of a now-familiar pattern: grandiose rhetoric concealing a governance model steeped in opacity and extravagance.
The 2025 National Budget, presented on 17 January as the largest in Guyana’s history at G$1.382 trillion – a 20.6% increase over 2024 – was marketed as the antidote to lingering post-pandemic hardship. Barely four months later, on 23 May, Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, secured parliamentary approval for a G$57.5 billion Supplementary Appropriation Bill, ostensibly to “complete a range of programmes such as its expansive electricity initiative.” Coming just three months before the 2025 general elections, this supplementary provision (the third in twelve months) stretched the fiscal envelope with minimal forensic scrutiny.
The Mid-Year Report subsequently revealed a lavish expenditure trail: G$104.6 billion to the Ministry of Public Works for roads, G$275.9 million for Amerindian water projects, and billions more parked under the elastic rubric of “contingencies.” Disbursements routinely bypassed rigorous audit trails and were directed to preferred contractors, flouting Article 172 of the Constitution which sanctifies the Consolidated Fund and mandates legislative sanction for every cent withdrawn.
This profligacy is compounded by a deliberate culture of secrecy. The Public Accounts Committee remains paralysed by chronically delayed Auditor General reports, leaving citizens to piece together the fate of their patrimony from sporadic leaks and after-the-fact disclosures. Such deliberate obscurity not only undermines democratic accountability but facilitates plunder.
Since assuming office in 2020, the PPP/C has driven external public debt beyond US$5 billion (approximately G$1 trillion), largely to underwrite mega-projects underwritten by sovereign guarantees. Yet the award of many of these contracts openly violates the Procurement Act 2003, which demands open, competitive tendering in the public interest.
Three recent, well-documented breaches illustrate the depth of the rot:
The Guyana Police Force deliberately split 62 contracts totalling G$15 million to stay beneath the threshold requiring open tender, a clear violation of Section 24 of the Procurement Act, as confirmed in the Auditor General’s Report for 2024 (tabled November 2025).
The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) awarded a contract exceeding G$200 million for the Belle Air Park housing development in April 2024 without public advertisement or competitive bidding, triggering sustained opposition calls for a forensic investigation into cronyism.
Components of the US$1.2 billion (G$250 billion) Demerara River Crossing were awarded in late 2024 through restrictive tendering with no published justification, in direct contravention of transparency requirements and despite Vice President Jagdeo’s own public cautions against selective tender practices.
These are not isolated lapses; they form a very troubling systemic pattern that breeds contempt for the rule of law and entrenches a kleptocratic order favouring the connected few.
Most indefensible of all is the persistence of mass poverty amid this petro-windfall. Guyana now produces over 650,000 barrels of oil per day and collects annual revenues exceeding US$10 billion. Still, according to the World Bank’s most recent comprehensive household survey (2019, still the baseline in 2025 owing to the absence of updated official data), 48.4% of the population – nearly one in every two Guyanese – lives below the international poverty line of US$6.85 per day. In a nation of such abundance, the continuation of poverty on this scale is not misfortune; it is policy.
As Budget 2026 takes shape, the choice is stark: accountability or anarchy. The great Kofi Annan reminded us that “there can be no true democracy without a culture of transparency and accountability.” Guyana’s citizens deserve more than rhetorical flourish and borrowed billions. They deserve budgets that are debated in daylight, contracts awarded in open competition, and oil wealth translated into dignity for the 48.4% who still await their share of the promise.
The 2026 Budget must not be another chapter in the chronicle of concealment. It must mark the moment when sunlight, in Justice Brandeis’s immortal phrase, finally disinfects the darkened corridors of Guyanese public finance.
