by Randy Gopaul
The Ali administration is selling universal bank accounts as a shiny AI-powered cure-all for Guyana’s ills. Don’t buy the brochure. Beneath the talk of “financial inclusion” lies a surveillance dragnet that will vacuum every dollar, every vendor stall sale, every village remittance into a government database, forever. The government’s goal is really visibility, in other words, “shadow-economy” sunlight.
Start with the shadow economy, the 30-40% of GDP that keeps families fed when formal jobs vanish. Cash is oxygen for the market woman in Parika, the gold miner in Mahdia, the fisherman dodging middlemen. Mandate bank accounts and that oxygen gets piped through a single, AI-monitored hose and the government will come for its share of the revenue. Additionally, one system hiccup, say, a “suspicious” cash deposit pattern, and accounts freeze, livelihoods choke. The Guyana Revenue Authority won’t need warrants; it will probably have preemptive kill switches. Citizens must be vigilant.
Tax evasion? Sure, some big fish swim free, but the net will snare the small fry hardest. A street vendor who rounds up to the nearest hundred to avoid exact change suddenly triggers an AI flag. Every cent you make in the market is now taxable. Miss one digital VAT filing because your smartphone died in the rain or you struggle with literacy, and penalties compound before you reach the tax office. Regional pilots already show compliance “jumping” 15%, code for coercion, not enlightenment.
Oil money makes the bait sweeter and the hook sharper. As Stabroek billions flood in, the government needs airtight ledgers to siphon its cut. Universal accounts guarantee it; every royalty-linked subsidy, every community grant, every micro-loan routed through the same AI overseer. Miss a repayment because floodwaters swallowed your crop? Your credit score tanks, your next relief check vanishes, and the algorithm labels you “high risk” for life.
The unbanked, mostly single mothers and women in general, hinterland residents, youth, aren’t being empowered; they’re being enrolled in a system rigged against them. No cash means no bargaining power when the mobile network drops for days, no fallback when banks hike fees, no anonymity when political favors are tallied or when the President or Vice President believe you to be an enemy like Azzrudin Mohomad. AI “personalization” is just predictive policing in a friendlier font.
Efficiency is the final sales pitch, and it’s the cruelest lie. Yes, subsidies will flow faster, straight into accounts the state can garnish at will. Audits will be “automated”, meaning fewer humans to appeal to when the machine errs. Resources “freed” from enforcement won’t build schools; they’ll fund more servers to watch us closer.
Guyana isn’t stepping on the AI accelerator. It’s flooring the brake on economic freedom. Cash was the last buffer between citizens and the state. Kill it, and the shadows don’t vanish, they just become government property.
