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Mid-Year 2026 Report – Confusion: Berbice Bridge, Ashni Singh and Non-Sanctity of Contract
Yesterday’s commentary on the 2026 Mid-Year Report dealt with how housing was reported. Today’s concerns something potentially more serious involving the Berbice Bridge – a project dogged by controversy from its conception more than two decades ago. The omission is inexplicable and far too consequential to dismiss as an oversight by a Senior Minister.
This current round did not mysteriously emerge in September 2026. In August 2025, President Irfaan Ali said publicly that Government was already in the final stages of negotiations to acquire the Bridge and, significantly, that “the Minister of Finance is leading that.” By August 21, 2026, Singh had therefore been leading the negotiations for a full year. On that date, the members of Berbice Bridge Company Inc. (BBCI) resolved that the company be wound up voluntarily and appointed chartered accountant Raan Motilall as liquidator.
The Mid-Year Report is dated August 28, a week after that event, although it was not released until September 14. Yet the 119-page Report contains not a word about the proposed “acquisition” of BBCI by an over-accommodating Government, following negotiations which President Ali had said Singh was leading, or about the company’s August 21 decision to enter voluntary liquidation.
Yet within days of its release, the public learnt that Government had paid out $400 million in the very transaction the Report had ignored. This was no peripheral matter carelessly omitted from a long report.
A so-called explanation subsequently given by former BBCI Chairman Paul Cheong makes the transaction even more difficult to understand. Government did not, strictly speaking, pay $400 million to BBCI for the Bridge. Cheong says it bought all 400 million issued ordinary shares at $1 each, with the money paid to the existing shareholders.
That distinction is fundamental. A sale of existing shares is a transaction between seller and purchaser. The company does not receive the purchase price; its role is principally to recognise and register the transfer. If Government bought all the ordinary shares, it acquired ownership of those shares and the rights attaching to them; that did not, by itself, terminate or reverse the liquidation.
Once the shareholders resolved to wind up BBCI, the position changed completely. The winding-up took effect from the date of the resolution and any subsequent transfer of shares was void unless made to or with the sanction of the liquidator. If the $400 million transaction occurred after August 21, did Motilall sanction it? If before, why did Government buy the shares of a company whose members were about to put it into liquidation?
Significantly, the Government is no innocent outsider. Through NICIL, its investment arm, it was already part of BBCI’s corporate structure and held the special or “golden” share with substantial veto rights.
A share sale does not dispose of the company’s assets or liabilities. Liquidation does. What, then, was left for Motilall to liquidate? What assets and liabilities remained? What became of the preference shares, bonds and other financial instruments? And how did the winding-up fit into Government’s purchase of the ordinary shares?
As a measure of value, the claim that Government acquired an $8 billion Bridge for only $400 million is wrong, mischievous and misleading. The number of shares in issue tells us nothing about the value of the company. BBCI could have had four million shares instead of 400 million and Government could still have agreed to pay $400 million, or whatever sum. Multiplying 400 million shares by $1 is an arithmetic exercise, not a valuation.
Nor does Cheong’s reference to a $1 “nominal value” help. Guyana abolished par or nominal value for shares when the Companies Act 1991 came into force in 1995. If Government agreed to pay $1 per share, that was the purchase price, not some legally prescribed value.
The real valuation issue lies in the Concession Agreement. BBCI never owned the Bridge in perpetuity. It operated under a fixed-term concession due to expire in 2027. Under the Berbice River Bridge Act and the Concession Agreement, the Bridge and related rights and assets were to pass to Government at the end of the concession period, free of the relevant liens and encumbrances and in the condition required by the concession.
And what became of the Government’s much-vaunted principle of the “sanctity of contract”? President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo have repeatedly invoked that principle in relation to Exxon and the 2016 Petroleum Agreement. Yet here was another contract involving the State, with a clear end date and a clear obligation to transfer the Bridge to Government. If sanctity of contract is the inviolable principle Government says it is, why was the State paying $400 million for shares in the concessionaire only months before the contractual handover?
Sanctity cannot be an immutable principle when dealing with ExxonMobil and an inconvenience when dealing with the Berbice Bridge.
By September 2026, only months remained before the contractual handover. The relevant question is therefore not what the Bridge cost to build nearly twenty years earlier, nor the historical value of BBCI. Under the Concession Agreement, Government was shortly to receive the Bridge and the rights and assets required to be transferred with it. BBCI would remain responsible for its other assets, liabilities and obligations. Why, then, did Government need to buy BBCI’s ordinary shares at all – and what did the $400 million purchase give the State beyond what it was entitled to under the Concession Agreement?
Nor is there any basis yet for assuming that $400 million was the entire cost and obligation to the State. BBCI had obligations and securities beyond its ordinary shares. Its audited financial statements disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars in other obligations. Until there is a complete accounting of the liabilities, preference shares, debt instruments and any obligations assumed or discharged directly or indirectly by Government, the transaction should properly be described as involving at least $400 million, and potentially more.
Liquidation is a process that includes the statutory order of payment to all stakeholders. It is unfair to expect Ashni Singh and Paul Cheong to understand all its legal implications. And so I have to ask: where was the Attorney General, the principal legal adviser to the Government? A transaction of this nature surely demanded competent and independent legal advice. The failure to obtain or heed such advice may bring into play an even more critical piece of legislation – the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA).
This is no longer simply about whether Government negotiated a good or bad bargain. Section 31 of the FMAA regulates the requisition and payment of public money and requires the necessary certification before payment. Section 48 goes further: a Minister or official shall not “misuse, misapply, or improperly dispose of public moneys.” Section 49 provides for personal liability where a loss of public money is caused or contributed to through misconduct or deliberate or serious disregard of reasonable standards of care.
On the basis of publicly available information, there is no finding of statutory breaches. But their existence can change the character of the questions Government must answer. Who gave the legal advice? Who authorised and certified the payment? What valuation supported it? And what precisely did the State acquire for its money?
On housing, the problem was the disjointed inclusion of information in the Mid-Year Report. On the Berbice Bridge, it was the opposite – the exclusion of critical information within the knowledge of Dr. Singh. If $400 million – and potentially much more – of public money was paid out when it ought not to have been paid, the issue goes far beyond an omission from an accountability report. It raises questions of misuse or misapplication of public money and personal liability for loss of public funds, matters for which sections 48 and 49 of the FMAA expressly provide.
Christopher Ram
September 22, 2026
Mid-year Report – Confusion: Housing Report, Finance Ministry and Ashni Singh
On September 17, 2026, on chrisram.net, I published a letter entitled “CHPA and its Performance,” raising questions about the quality of financial and performance reporting by the Central Housing and Planning Authority. I indicated then that I would examine the Government’s 2026 Mid-Year Report more fully. Having now done so, the housing section – and the role of Dr. Ashni Singh, the Minister Responsible for Finance – reinforce those concerns.
The Report states that $89.9 billion of the $159.1 billion housing-sector allocation was spent in the first half of 2026, describing the expenditure as being “to expand affordable housing for citizens.” That description is misleadingly broad, since the housing programme also encompasses major infrastructure, community facilities, Silica City and other expenditure which cannot simply be equated with affordable housing. If the $89.9 billion includes expenditure on roads, drains, street lighting, industrial areas, recreational facilities and major developments still in progress, then the Report should say so and identify how much was spent on each major component. Without that breakdown, the reader cannot tell what proportion of the $89.9 billion actually went to houses or house lots, what went to infrastructure and community works, and what went to longer-term projects such as Silica City.
Clearly, the problem is not a shortage of numbers. It is that, presented as they are by Singh, they make very little sense as an account of expenditure. They are neither reconciled nor adequately explained and, for purposes of determining what the $89.9 billion actually purchased, are largely meaningless. Instead of a coherent account showing where the money went, the reader is given a succession of disparate statistics: lots allocated, titles distributed, houses constructed, developments completed or in progress, street lamps installed, subsidies provided, applications processed, and recreational spaces and industrial areas under development.
The sheer quantity of numbers should not be mistaken for accountability. What Dr. Singh fails to provide is the information that matters: expenditure by programme and project; the cost of completed works; expenditure to date on unfinished works; the relationship between money spent and physical progress; material variations from budget; and some basis upon which the National Assembly and the public can judge the use made of nearly $90 billion.
The deficiencies are therefore not merely matters of presentation or drafting. When expenditure of this magnitude is reported without the information necessary to assess it, public scrutiny is weakened and financial accountability is reduced to a cash spent statement. A country dealing with public expenditure on this scale is entitled to considerably better reporting.
That responsibility cannot simply be laid at the door of CHPA. Dr. Singh presents both the annual Budget and the Mid-Year Report. The Budget sets out the Government’s account of past performance and its policies, allocations and targets for the current year; the Mid-Year Report is intended to report on their implementation. The defective quality of that financial reporting therefore falls squarely within the portfolio for which Dr. Singh is responsible.
On top of this, there is a curious institutional confusion surrounding the finance portfolio. Dr. Singh’s formal – and cumbersome – title is Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance. The Office of the President stated on his appointment that responsibility for finance was placed within the Office of the President, which would retain its oversight role. Yet the 2026 National Estimates contain “Agency 03 – Ministry of Finance”, identify Dr. Singh as the Minister responsible for that agency, and describe its functions as those of “the Ministry”.
The Government also operates a Ministry of Finance website and issues its Budget documents under that name. The Gazette arrangements recognise a Ministry of Finance, but there is no separately styled Minister of Finance: the political responsibility remains with Dr. Singh in his capacity as Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance. The problem may therefore be wider than the housing numbers. The Government’s own documents do not present a wholly coherent institutional picture: finance is retained within the Office of the President, while for budgeting and administration a Ministry of Finance continues to exist and operate under Singh’s responsibility.
Whatever explains that strange arrangement, accountability cannot be allowed to become equally confused. Dr. Singh presents the Budget and the Mid-Year Report, while President Ali retained oversight of finance within the Office of the President. Between them, there should be no uncertainty about who bears responsibility for ensuring that the country receives a clear, coherent and intelligible account of how its money is being spent.
Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded Column 201
Time for the Sanctity of Contract Circus to come to an end.
President Irfaan Ali recycles the argument so often that it is now official doctrine: the 2016 Stabroek Block Petroleum Agreement is a bad deal for Guyana, but “sanctity of contract” prevents renegotiation. In his recent Al Jazeera interview, Ali again asserted the Agreement was bad and the companies benefited more, yet continued to invoke sanctity as though that answered the issue.
Ali knows no serious critic is suggesting Guyana should renege on the Agreement. Reneging means refusing to honour a contract; renegotiation means asking the other parties to agree to different terms. If they agree, the amended agreement becomes the contract to be honoured. Ali’s conflation of the two is not merely mistaken but disingenuous. It turns a lawful request for better terms into an accusation of contractual dishonour and smacks of evasion.
Guyana cannot compel renegotiation or impose an amendment unilaterally. But it can ask. The contractors may refuse. What remains difficult to explain is why the Ali Administration refuses to ask.
The sanctity argument is debunked by facts Ali rarely acknowledges. The 1999 Petroleum Agreement was replaced by the 2016 Agreement, itself the product of a renegotiation of the contractual relationship. Exxon’s own then Country Manager described the 2016 PSA as a renegotiation. The 2016 Agreement was later amended in 2019 over the treatment of the 2% royalty. ExxonMobil and its partners did not walk away. They accepted the new arrangement and continued investing.
Did Ali not know about sanctity when, before taking office, he thunderously promised to “review and renegotiate” the petroleum contracts? Or is sanctity a principle he discovered only after assuming office? His earlier commitment is a matter of public record. In February 2020, he said everything was on the table for review and renegotiation.
The President also repeatedly raised the prospect that the oil companies might leave if Guyana presses for better terms. Yet his own Administration previously argued, in resisting ring-fencing, the circumstances change once investments are made. They will not walk. More importantly, the petroleum industry is replete with renegotiations – in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Bolivia, Ecuador and Ghana, sometimes more than once. Some were difficult and some governments went far beyond anything being suggested for Guyana. In most cases the companies stayed. Where companies did leave, the circumstances commonly involved nationalisation, imposed terms or economics that became commercially unattractive.
That is fundamentally different from a host government asking for consensual discussions. Stabroek is not marginal acreage. It is a developed and highly productive petroleum province with enormous discoveries, several producing projects, established infrastructure and billions of dollars already invested. The geological and commercial risks today are vastly different from those existing when the Agreement was signed in 2016. Ali himself concedes the bargain favoured the companies, yet behaves as though those transformed circumstances are irrelevant.
There is another point routinely obscured. Esso is the Operator, charged under Article 2.2 with conducting the day-to-day activities, but the Contractor comprises three parties. Those interests are held by Exxon, Chevron and CNOOC. The Agreement makes the distinction explicit and makes the obligations of the parties comprising the Contractor joint and several.
Government should therefore write formally to each of the companies, setting out the Guyana proposes to discuss and request individual responses. There is no reason to assume beforehand that three separate companies, with different ownership, commercial interests and relationships with Guyana, must inevitably take the same position.
In CNOOC’s case, Guyana also retains a substantial diplomatic relationship with China. There would be nothing improper in Government using its relationship with the Chinese Embassy to communicate the seriousness with which Guyana approaches the matter and its desire for constructive engagement. Diplomacy cannot rewrite a commercial contract, but neither should a sovereign state neglect legitimate diplomatic channels where they may assist.
The Government should also explain the legal basis of its position. The Attorney General is, under Article 112 of the Constitution, the principal legal adviser to the Government of Guyana. Yet the public defence of the Agreement has come principally from President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo and the Minister of Natural Resources. If “sanctity of contract” is being presented as a legal impediment to even seeking renegotiation, then Guyanese are entitled to know whether it is in fact the considered advice of the Attorney General.
The Government retains constitutional and other legal experts from across the Caribbean for matters in which it considers specialist advice necessary. Ali recently spoke of obtaining experts on contract financing in an area where the Agreement gives Guyana limited direct control. Yet on the fundamental legal question whether the State may formally seek consensual amendments to an agreement worth many billions of dollars to the country, no considered legal opinion has been placed before the public.
If the Government is serious, it should stop speculating about what the companies might do, and proceed to establish. Put a formal written proposal to Exxon, Chevron and CNOOC separately, identifying the provisions Guyana wishes to revisit, and publish the responses. If all three refuse, the country will at least know that the companies have closed the door. Until then, every assertion that they would “walk away” is conjecture being used to justify inaction.
Ali must stop the charade and come clean with the public. If his Administration has made a political decision that the 2016 Agreement will not be touched, let him say so plainly, and boldly accept responsibility for that decision. He should stop dressing a policy choice in the language of legal inevitability.
That decision is not about one year or one budget. It is a decision to preserve for decades a bargain whose roots go back to 1999 and whose 2016 terms can govern the exploitation of Guyana’s principal petroleum resource far into this century. It is a bargain under which Guyana receives only a 2% royalty, shares profit oil after cost recovery, has to contribute to decommissioning, and assumes the contractors’ income-tax liability through the machinery of the Agreement. If Ali intends to leave those extraordinary concessions untouched for another generation and more, then that is his decision and he should man up to it.
He cannot continue blaming “sanctity of contract” for a result his own Government chooses to preserve. If Guyanese are forced to live with the consequences of this Agreement into the latter part of the century, they are entitled to know this is not some unavoidable command of contract law. It is President Irfaan Ali’s and the PPP/C’s political choice.
CHPA and its Performance
Dear Editor,
I apologise for the length of this letter. Its subject, the CH&PA, deals with billions of dollars, vast areas of State land and projects of major political and financial significance. No one even tries to defend its record against evidence of unlawful reporting failures, deficient accounting and conflict-of-interest concerns surrounding its audit by the Audit Office. Silica City – the brainchild of President Ali – is not merely another housing scheme. It is the creation of a new city involving substantial public expenditure, State land and long-term commitments. I have called it “Pradoville 3 in the Making” because that combination of political power, public assets and inadequate transparency demands close scrutiny.
CH&PA now says approximately G$9.1 billion is being invested in Region Three to develop more than 3,800 serviced residential lots. That is about G$2.4 million per lot.
But compare that with the original Saudi announcement. In June 2023, the Government announced a US$100 million Saudi Fund loan for housing infrastructure intended to provide about 2,500 housing units across three regions, including roads, water, sewerage, electricity, wells and social facilities. US$100 million is approximately G$21 billion. Yet CH&PA now says G$9.1 billion – less than half that amount – will produce more than 3,800 lots in Region Three alone.
That is too major an issue to go unnoticed. One region will apparently produce over 50% more lots for G$9.1 billion than the 2,500 units originally associated with a G$21 billion programme across three regions. The press should have asked: Has the project changed? Were “housing units” and “serviced lots” being used differently? What happened to the original scope? How much of the Saudi loan has been drawn down and spent? What are Regions Four and Six receiving?
Instead, we had diversions from the CH&PA actors. CEO Martin Pertab said the contracts provide for completion within ten months, but CH&PA wants the works finished in six or seven. Director of Projects Omar Narine warned that performance would be considered when future contracts are awarded.
If ten months is the contractual period, why is six or seven now being demanded? If accelerated completion was essential, why was it not written into the contracts? More importantly, what do the contracts say about performance bonds, liquidated damages, retention, default and termination? Billion-dollar contracts should be enforced through their terms, not exhortations or vague warnings about future work.
Narine’s comment raises another issue. Contractor performance can properly matter in future procurement, but only through transparent, objective and consistently applied criteria. Public contracts should not depend on informal displeasure or favour.
The wider issue is CH&PA itself. It controls enormous quantities of State land and billions of public dollars while meaningful public reporting has diminished. Opacity creates the conditions in which waste, favouritism, misuse of public funds and corruption can go undetected.
Silica City sharpens that concern. It is closely associated with President Ali and involves valuable State land, major public expenditure and long-term commitments, yet the public still lacks a clear project-level account of its total cost, contracts, expenditure and parliamentary authority.
The questions were obvious: Why do the Saudi numbers no longer appear to match? Where are the contracts? Where are the penalties? How much has actually been spent? What is the full cost of Silica City? Under what parliamentary authority is it proceeding? And where are CH&PA’s comprehensive annual reports?
When a public institution – with major issues of corruption and lack of accountability on its CV – operates behind such a wall of opacity, the value of the press lies not merely in reporting what it is told, but in interrogation and investigation. My respectful view is that it is not too late.
Christopher Ram
Pay the Guyanese the balance of their Cash Grant.
Dear Editor,
The Mid-Year Report dated August 28 (?) contains a figure that deserves attention. In paragraph 3.64, the Minister responsible for Finance projects petroleum deposits into the Natural Resource Fund of US$6,497.6 million for 2026. That is 136.8 per cent above what was assumed when Budget 2026 was presented in January, before the war in the Middle East transformed the oil price.
The people’s share of that windfall now moves downward.
Consider how the current grant was determined. The G$73.6 billion appropriated for the National Cash Grant represents 14.3 per cent of the US$2,471.4 million deposited in 2025, the year on which this year’s withdrawal was calculated. That is the Government’s own proportion, derived from its own conduct. Apply the same proportion to the Minister’s own projection for 2026, and the citizen’s entitlement for the year is G$193.5 billion, or roughly G$270,000 for each adult. Of that, G$73.6 billion has been provided. The outstanding balance is G$121.8 billion, or about G$170,000 a head. So, I am not asking for a new benefit. I’m requesting the unpaid remainder of a share that the Government itself fixed.
Nor am I asking for a single additional dollar from the Fund. Paragraph 3.45 records that G$212.1 billion was withdrawn to June, with a further G$282.9 billion expected, exhausting the entire G$495.0 billion permitted this year. The money is coming out regardless. The only question is who receives it. The report shows where it can be found.
As of June 30, expenditure under the Public Sector Investment Programme stood at G$248.9 billion against a programme revised upward to G$829.7 billion. That is 30 per cent executed at the halfway point, requiring G$580.8 billion in the remaining six months – with many projects stalled and no Public Procurement Commission. Paragraph 3.52 is even more telling: first-half capital spending exceeded the same period of 2025 by G$1.9 billion, while the programme itself was enlarged by G$50.1 billion. The government has increased its plans by fifty billion dollars and its performance by two billion.
The people’s balance is not competing with roads and schools that will be built this year. It is competing with a projection that will not be met. But let me anticipate the reply. If it is said that putting G$121.8 billion into citizens’ hands would fuel inflation, I refer the Minister to his own paragraph 3.35, which presents cash support to every Guyanese over 18 as a measure to cushion rising costs and increase disposable income. The Government cannot describe this payment as relief at G$100,000 and as a danger at G$270,000 without telling us where the line falls and on what evidence.
Having regard to the real increase in cost of living belatedly admitted by President Ali, the Government must make a supplementary payment of G$170,000 to every Guyanese aged eighteen and over, before the end of the financial year, out of money already lawfully withdrawn.
And I ask the Minister the question for which the Government characteristically has no policy – let alone an answer. What percentage of this country’s petroleum receipts does the Government consider the Guyanese people’s correct share? If it is 14.3%, the balance is due now. If it is something less, please have him name the figure and explain why the people’s portion is reduced in the very year that oil revenue increases significantly.
I shall examine the Mid-Year Report more fully this weekend.
Yours faithfully
Christopher Ram