Business & Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
Introduction
Today’s column notes the absence of the 2025 Mid-Year Report required under Section 67 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA), a vital part of the financial and governance architecture of Guyana. Section 67 of the FMAA requires that the Minister of Finance, within sixty days after the end of each half year, to prepare and submit to the National Assembly a mid-year report. The contents of the report include the actual versus the budgeted fiscal performance, an update on projections, and a statement of measures proposed by the government.
The 60-days deadline passed since the end of August and is now more than six weeks overdue. From all appearances, the report has been an unintended casualty of the dissolution of the Twelfth Parliament, the September 1 elections, and the delayed convening of the Thirteenth Parliament. But this omission is not some clerical oversight. It is a breach of the law and a blow to fiscal transparency. As an official publication, it could have been issued under the authority of the Official Gazette. Creativity is in making things happen – not in how to circumvent the law with impunity.
The duty imposed by section 67 is on the Minister – not on Parliament. The Act is silent on the dissolution of the National Assembly, but silence does not suspend the obligation. Nothing prevents the Minister from completing the report within the legal timeframe and making it public, even if formal tabling must await the Assembly’s reconvening. Accountability should not pause because Parliament is asleep. Elections may suspend politics; they do not suspend the law.
Guardrail of accountability and democracy
Inexplicably, and despite an impressive and expansive agenda, nearly seven weeks after the elections, President Ali has failed to convene Parliament. It is hard to believe that a Party with an enhanced majority would stretch this dormancy for the full period allowed under the Burnham Constitution – as they used to like describing our founding document. By the time the Mid-Year Report is finally tabled, the fiscal year will be almost over, and the report’s purpose and functions destroyed. A mid-year report published at year-end is a contradiction in terms. It becomes historical trivia rather than a management tool for mid-course correction.
Paradoxically, the September elections made the timely availability of the report of greater importance in making a more informed choice. Its availability would have allowed citizens to compare the latest performance of actual with budgeted revenues and expenditures, assess the economy’s direction, and the government’s financial management. Contesting parties would have had a clear and timely picture of the country’s finances and the conditions they would face, if elected. Without it, everyone was operating in the dark, a dangerous place to be in an election year when spending pressures and political temptations intensify.
No technical lapse
Bad as that was, the continuing delay in making the report available has broader implications. The government’s failure to observe even the most basic fiscal reporting obligation is no longer a technical lapse: it forms part of the quiet dismantling of democratic and governance guardrails that has been taking place for some time now. When governments ignore statutory duties, when Parliament sleeps, and when oversight bodies choose silence, the architecture of accountability collapses, gradually but inexorably, until barely the shell of a frame is left standing.
We note too that the half-year report of the Bank of Guyana is also outstanding for this year. The Bank of Guyana Act requires the Bank to prepare and transmit a report for that half year to the Minister of Finance. Exercising its operational independence, the Bank ought to consider itself free to post the report on its website as soon as it has sent the original to the Minister. It is not required to get the Minister’s approval, particularly if such approval is conditioned for the wrong reasons.
If one assumes that the Bank has met its statutory obligation regarding the half-year report, the omission by the Minister takes on a greater significance. It makes his duty all the more pronounced.
It would be good too, if the Guyana Revenue Authority and the National Insurance Scheme, which both fall under the Minister of Finance, were to follow good practice in tabling annual and mid-year reports promptly. Accountability cannot be selective, or one-sided. A government and statutory bodies that demand compliance from the public on pain of penalties must at least obey the law, and desirably, follow good practice. If Parliament permits open breaches without consequence, it becomes complicit in executive lawlessness.
The Government of 2020 – 2025 remained in place following dissolution, functioning quite normally. The Minister remained the Minister, enjoying the full benefit of his technical and administrative staff responsible for the report’s preparation. If the Government takes accountability seriously, then there can be no excuse for the omission.
Conclusion
The overlap of Parliament and the executive means that Parliament behaves like an adjunct of the executive. It should be free to call out Ministers and public officers, even of statutory bodies, who breach their statutory obligations. It is an indictment of public sector management of this country that persons can fail egregiously in complying with the law and the performance of their duties but face no consequence.
Irony of ironies – the de jure Minister of Finance is the President himself. Dr. Ashni Singh is the minister responsible for finance in the Office of the President. What a confused state of affairs we face. How this confusion is resolved is anyone’s guess.
Notwithstanding, the publication of the mid-year report is a necessary start. And oh, the report on the 2022 Census!