A national budget of $1.558 trillion should have been more than sufficient to address Guyana’s development priorities, stabilise public services, and lay the foundation for sustainable growth. Yet, barely into the fiscal year, the People’s Progressive Party government is now seeking an additional $54.8 billion from the public purse. The unavoidable question is simple and damning: where is the money going?
This pattern signals more than fiscal adjustment; it reflects reckless spending and weak financial discipline. At a time when citizens are grappling with rising costs of living, substandard infrastructure, and overstretched public services, the government’s answer appears to be a further raid on the nation’s coffers—without transparent justification or measurable outcomes.
Even more troubling is the institutional vacuum in which this spending is taking place. The Public Procurement Commission (PPC)—the very body designed to safeguard transparency, competitiveness, and value for money—remains unconstituted. In its absence, billions are being expended with limited independent oversight. This is not a procedural oversight; it is a fundamental governance failure. Without the PPC, public confidence in procurement collapses, and the risk of waste, favouritism, and corruption multiplies.
Budgets are not abstract numbers. They are the collective contribution of hard-working citizens—taxpayers, small businesses, public servants—who expect stewardship, not excess. When supplemental billions are demanded without clarity, while oversight mechanisms are ignored, it conveys contempt for accountability and indifference to public trust. To many, this feels like an ongoing extraction from the people to finance a system that lacks restraint and scrutiny.
Guyana’s oil revenues should have ushered in a new era of prudence, planning, and institutional strengthening. Instead, the country is being asked to accept ballooning expenditure alongside weakened safeguards. That is not development; it is mismanagement dressed up as progress.
If the PPP government insists on taking more, it must first give more—more transparency, more accountability.
![It was the first time Nepal had independently carried out such measurements amid speculation of a possible change in height due to global warming and a 2015 earthquake [File: Tashi Tsering/Xinhua via AP]](https://villagevoicenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Nepal-and-China.jpeg)
