Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday knocked concerns raised by Nigel Hughes about Guyana’s oil sector earnings, stressing that those funds are all accounted for with robust system of checks and balances.
The Vice President, during his weekly press conference, responded to comments about Guyana’s oil fund reportedly made by Hughes, who is the leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC) political party.
Mr. Hughes reportedly said that some of Guyana’s oil funds- some US$5 billion- were unaccounted for. Jagdeo rejected this statement.
According to Dr. Jagdeo, the earnings are all accounted for and subject to levels of oversight before any spending is done, including parliamentary scrutiny.
The Vice President related that about US$5.4 billion has been accumulated by the country as oil funds. Of that amount, as of September 2024, the balance of the oil wealth fund was US$3.2 billion. This follows withdrawals made, as publicised by the Ministry of Finance.
This means that about 60% of the oil funds remain untouched while 40% were used but first approved in the National Assembly.
“I don’t know if this guy (Hughes) thinks before he talks or posts stuff,” Jagdeo said.
He later emphasised, “Every cent is audited by the Auditor General so the money can’t be missing.”
He also noted that amendments to the law that governs Guyana’s oil wealth fund have resulted in a more transparent management of the earnings.
The Natural Resource Fund (NRF) Act, which was amended in 2021, dismantled the previous framework enacted by the last government, which entrusted sole authority to manage the NRF to the Finance Minister.
The current legislation allows for the fund to be managed by a Board of Directors, which is responsible for reviewing and approving the policies of the fund and monitoring its performance, thereby completely separating the management of the fund from the minister responsible for finance.
Earnings and expenditures are to be reported. If not, the Finance Minister could face jail time. And withdrawals from the fund are subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and are guided by a fixed formula.
So Jagdeo criticised the statements from Hughes, noting that as a political leader, he has to be more responsible.
Like Dr. Jagdeo, local financial analyst Joel Bhagwandin pointed out these facts. Bhagwandin also noted that it was the opposition parties that mismanaged funds.
“On the contrary, the APNU+AFC hid the US$18 million bonus from Exxon in violation of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, they ran up an overdraft illegally of over $140 billion that was unaccounted for, the illegal spending on the capital budget after the no-confidence motion between 2019-2020 amounted to $142 billion, thereby bringing the grand total to about $286 billion that remained unaccounted for, illegally expended as well, by the APNU+AFC during their tenure in 2015-2020,” he said in a Facebook post.
