Guyana’s unprecedented oil boom and record-breaking national budgets have come under renewed scrutiny following the publication of a Feminist Budget Analysis (FBA) by advocacy organisation Tamùkke, which argues that rapid economic growth has not been matched by equitable social development. The report examines whether public spending is reaching women, Indigenous communities, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups despite the country’s expanding fiscal resources.
The debate comes at a time when Guyana has generated more than US$8 billion in cumulative revenues from profit oil and royalties since petroleum production began in December 2019, helping to fuel one of the fastest economic expansions in the world. Successive budgets have grown sharply alongside rising oil revenues, with the 2026 National Budget reaching a record G$1.558 trillion.
Yet questions about who is benefiting from that growth continue to persist. Last year the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reported that approximately 58 per cent of Guyanese live below the poverty line, while 32 per cent live in extreme poverty. The findings reignited debate about the extent to which economic growth is translating into improved living standards. Several local analysts and commentators have argued that the actual figures could be higher, particularly in rural and hinterland communities where poverty and limited access to services remain longstanding concerns.
Against that backdrop, Tamùkke has released its report titled “An Intersectional Feminist Desk Analysis of Guyana’s 2026 National Budget: Health, Environment and Equity,” examining government expenditure through an intersectional feminist lens with particular focus on the health and environmental sectors.
The organisation argues that while public spending has expanded dramatically, allocations remain largely gender-neutral in design and implementation and are not systematically directed toward addressing structural inequalities.
“Budgets are political documents, and they reflect the government’s choices about whose needs are treated as urgent and whose needs are treated as secondary,” said Tamùkke Managing Director Akola Thompson. “A feminist perspective makes those choices now more visible.”
At the heart of the analysis is a challenge to the assumption that economic growth automatically translates into social progress.
The report argues that many vulnerable groups remain largely invisible within national expenditure frameworks despite the country’s expanding fiscal capacity. According to the analysis, women in hinterland and rural communities continue to face significant barriers in accessing healthcare and reproductive services, while Indigenous communities bear disproportionate environmental risks associated with mining and extractive industries.
One of the report’s most striking findings relates to the South Rupununi village of Parabara, where testing reportedly found elevated mercury levels among all Indigenous residents sampled, with some of the highest concentrations recorded among women.
The report uses the finding to illustrate what it describes as the unequal environmental burden borne by communities living near extractive activities.
Tamùkke also points to what it says are continuing barriers faced by Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender women in accessing sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including cervical cancer screening and sexual health education.
The analysis identifies three major structural shortcomings in current spending priorities.
The first is what it calls a “distributional gap,” arguing that residents of hinterland regions continue to confront long travel distances, transportation costs and limited access to specialised healthcare despite increased national expenditure.
The second is a “prevention gap,” where spending on hospitals and emergency response infrastructure reportedly outpaces investment in community-based healthcare, reproductive services and environmental monitoring. According to the report, this often transfers the burden of care and risk management to households, particularly women who perform unpaid caregiving work.
The third is an “inclusion gap,” where Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ citizens and persons with disabilities are not explicitly reflected in expenditure structures or targeted spending programmes.
The report argues that legal protections alone do not necessarily guarantee access to services.
As an example, it notes that while Guyana’s Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act provides a legal framework for abortion services, access remains geographically concentrated and largely unavailable in many hinterland communities.
“Our analysis found that economic transformation is outpacing social transformation,” Thompson said. “And without a feminist analysis, that gap has no name and no corrective.”
The findings enter a broader debate that has accompanied Guyana’s oil boom. While the Government has repeatedly highlighted investments in healthcare, education, infrastructure, housing and social assistance programmes as evidence that oil revenues are improving lives, civil society organisations, economists and social commentators have increasingly questioned whether development gains are being distributed evenly across society.
Questions of inequality have become increasingly prominent as Guyana experiences rapid economic growth alongside continuing concerns about poverty, access to healthcare, environmental protection and the development needs of hinterland communities.
Notably, Tamùkke insists that the report is not intended as a condemnation of government spending but rather as a tool to improve future planning.
“By identifying precisely where and how fiscal expansion is failing to reach marginalized populations, it provides a concrete basis for more targeted, accountable and equitable budget design going forward,” Thompson said.
Among the report’s recommendations are the establishment of a Gender-Responsive Budgeting Unit within the Ministry of Finance by 2027, expansion of abortion services beyond Regions Four, Six and Nine, implementation of routine mercury testing in mining communities, nationwide Comprehensive Sexuality Education programmes, and the development of accessible disaster shelters and climate adaptation projects for Indigenous communities.
“These are not abstract proposals — they respond directly to documented gaps and the immeasurable impacts they have on women, girls and gender-diverse people across Guyana,” Thompson stated.
Ultimately, the report argues that Guyana’s oil revenues have fundamentally changed the country’s fiscal reality. With petroleum income providing unprecedented financial resources and national expenditure rising from G$1.146 trillion in 2024 to G$1.558 trillion in 2026, Tamùkke contends that affordability is no longer the central issue.
Instead, the organisation argues that the more pressing question is whether Guyana’s historic wealth expansion will be used to intentionally address longstanding inequalities or whether economic growth will continue to outpace social inclusion.
“Our goal is to make apparent the limited gender lens within the National Budget, and to advocate for stronger gender programming and spending to effectively meet the needs of vulnerable communities,” Thompson said.
Guyana’s oil boom has dramatically expanded the State’s spending power, but the debate is increasingly shifting from how much money is being spent to who benefits from it. With more than US$8 billion earned from petroleum revenues and poverty still affecting a significant share of the population, Tamùkke’s analysis challenges policymakers to confront a difficult question: whether the country’s unprecedented wealth is narrowing long-standing social inequalities or merely enriching the national balance sheet while many vulnerable communities remain on the margins of development.
