Category: Business and Economic Commentary

Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

For nearly three decades, save for the five-year interval between 2015 and 2020, the PPP/C has exercised political stewardship over the State-owned GuySuCo. The present Minister of Agriculture has held that portfolio since 2020. The condition of the sugar industry today is therefore not the product of temporary misfortune or inherited instability. It is the cumulative result of sustained political management. The current CEO is a member of the central committee of the party. The immediate past Chairman is now a minister in the 2025 PPP/C government. It is interesting to briefly review its record.

When the PPP/C assumed office in 1992, sugar production stood at 243,010 tonnes. By 2004, under a management contract, output exceeded 320,000 tonnes. That contract ended. Production fell. By 2015, output had declined to 212,000 tonnes. When the administration returned in 2020, production stood at 88,868 tonnes. In the years since, output has fluctuated between approximately 47,000 and 60,000 tonnes, with 47,000 tonnes repeating itself.

The financial record mirrors the operational decline. Between 2004 and 2019, GuySuCo received approximately $95.3 billion in capital allocations. From 2020 to 2025, a further $41.9 billion was committed. Cumulative exposure now stands at roughly $137.3 billion. This is not project support. It is spent capital, even as output contracted.

The explanation cannot lie solely in labour migration, adverse weather, or global sugar prices. Those are industry realities. What distinguishes GuySuCo is the repeated cycle of political misjudgment, and capital initiatives followed by interruption, reversal, or abandonment.

A Packaging Plant costing millions of US Dollars was established at Enmore at significant cost, later dismantled and stored for years. Mechanisation conversion on the Lower East Coast Demerara, costing tens of billions of dollars reportedly progressed substantially before being discontinued. Capital works were undertaken but did not mature into sustained productivity. Comparable initiatives are now proposed elsewhere. A new make of heavy-duty equipment was bought on the wing of hope only to end up in the scrap heap.

In a capital-intensive agricultural enterprise, continuity is indispensable. Capital without continuity does not become productivity. It becomes depreciation.

When major strategic initiatives do not survive their own implementation cycle, the difficulty lies not in rainfall or labour supply, but in policy- formulation, decision-making and execution. Successive chief executives have been introduced with confidence – as turnaround specialists, as industry experts, as reformers. Yet across leadership cycles, the trajectory has remained downward. Titles have changed. Output has changed – but in the wrong direction.

The Minister now projects 100,000 tonnes in 2026 and profitability by 2030. At the same time, the Corporation acknowledges yield per hectare below target, limited factory grinding hours, inefficiencies in cane transport, and recovery rates requiring improvement. To move from under 60,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes within two years requires simultaneous correction of every major structural weakness. The history of GuySuCo does not inspire confidence in such radical transformation.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Of the proposed $8.4 billion operational subsidy for 2026, approximately $6.8 billion is allocated to wages. With a wage bill reportedly near $20 billion, GuySuCo must generate roughly $13 billion in sales merely to complete payroll. That excludes capital replacement, factory rehabilitation, debt servicing, and statutory arrears, including significant arrears obligations to the National Insurance Scheme and other public bodies.

Even if the 100,000-tonne target were achieved, the revenue required per tonne simply to bridge wages would leave limited margin for genuine profitability.

If annual injections in the range of $10 – 15 billion continue through 2029, an additional $40 – $60 billion will be committed before the promised year of profitability arrives. Even assuming sustained net profit thereafter, recovery of those injections would take decades, disregarding the $137.3 billion already expended and ignoring the time value of money. There is no indication that the PPP/C cares that this is neither a financial nor an economic proposition.

While GuySuCo could soon cross the line of no return, the issue is only partly operational. The deeper issue is governance. When policy direction, operational management, and oversight operate within the same political structure, independent commercial scrutiny weakens. In any private enterprise, three decades of declining output accompanied by over $137 billion in capital allocations would trigger restructuring, external review, and clear accountability. Only political considerations sustain current and indefinite architecture. 

Sugar is part of Guyana’s history and rural economy. It deserves serious policy, not perpetual experimentation. Support may be justified. Waste is not. Absent radical reform of governance – separating political control from commercial management, imposing independent oversight, and publishing transparent, costed transformation plans, projections of profitability by 2030 are not forecasts. They are wagers.

And the taxpayer is the one paying for this bet of folly.

Business & Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

During the Committee of Supply stage of the 2026 Budget, Bishop Juan Edghill, Minister of Public Works, announced that Government is finalising negotiations to purchase the Berbice River Bridge and suggested that the acquisition will cost less than the projected toll subsidies between now and next year. That comparison may sound fiscally attractive. It is not the comparison that determines legality or prudence.

The more perplexing question is this: why is the State proposing to buy an asset that it is already scheduled to own? The concession granted to Berbice Bridge Company Inc. under the Berbice River Bridge Act expires in June 2027. It does not create a permanent private ownership that ends only with a buyout. Section 7(1)(a) provides that upon expiry of the Concession period, all of the Concessionaire’s right, title and interest in and to the Bridge revert to the Minister. The statutory architecture is clear – concession for a defined term, followed by mandatory reversion.

The Minister responsible for Public Works is the authority named in the Act to enter into and regulate the Concession. The legal position is therefore fixed by statute and administered by the very office now asserting a negotiated acquisition. Frankly, there is no apparent justification or benefit.

There are certain basic propositions which, I trust, are not in dispute. The Concession Agreement remains in force. It has not been terminated or abrogated. While the Coalition subsidised certain tolls, the PPP/C removed tolls in August 2025, compensating the Bridge Company with full payment for vehicles crossing the Bridge. The only change was the source of payment: motorists ceased paying tolls; taxpayers replaced that revenue stream.

Under the concession arrangement, the company is not entitled to keep every dollar generated by traffic. Toll revenue must first meet operating and maintenance costs and service the project debt. Only the agreed return constitutes its entitlement. In addition, the Concession requires the Bridge to be handed back in good condition at expiry. The obligation to maintain the asset until 2027 rests with the Concessionaire. It is not a deferred cost to the State.

Between now and 2027, therefore, the company’s entitlement is limited to its operating costs, debt servicing and its contractually defined return, net of its continuing maintenance obligations. When the Concession ends, no private right survives beyond that date.

The first analytical question is unavoidable: has the subsidy exceeded that net surplus? If it has not, taxpayers have merely replaced motorists as the payer. If it has, then public funds are enlarging the company’s economic position beyond what the Concession permits before expiry.

The second question concerns the proposed acquisition. The State will receive the Bridge in 2027. The only economic value to the Company remaining in 2026 is the limited net entitlement between now and expiry. Any purchase price must therefore correspond to that residual value. Payment beyond it is not payment for a continuing right; it is compensation for rights that terminate by law.

It is difficult to reconcile the Minister’s public explanation with this statutory framework. The explanation offered is inconsistent with both the Act and the Concession Agreement. If the Minister’s position is otherwise, he must now state it by reference to those documents.

Further concerns arise because oversight from the Ministry of Finance and the Audit Office has been conspicuously muted in relation to this project, despite the magnitude of the public funds involved. The subsidy has been significant. The proposed acquisition will also be significant. Yet there has been no public reconciliation of those payments against the Concessionaire’s remaining lawful entitlement before reversion.

Adding to public concerns is the company’s apparent discomfort with scrutiny. Over the years, efforts to examine its corporate filings were met with resistance and, at times, prohibitive charges, including a demand in the region of $50,000 for access to a single page of a corporate document. Engagements at the Registry of Companies did not always reflect the transparency contemplated under company law. These matters form part of the governance history against which the present proposal must be assessed.

Corporate governance is not cosmetic. When private interest and public resources meet, when public infrastructure is financed under a private concession, governance is not a choice: it is a precondition. The Concessionaire includes significant private shareholders. Given the well-known proximity between senior political actors and a principal financier of the Bridge, the absence of transparent arithmetic only heightens the need for full disclosure, and triggers suspicion. In such circumstances, precision is not optional; it is essential.

The Minister in this matter is not merely a political negotiator. He is the statutory custodian of the Concession. His authority derives from the Act. His powers are bound by it. His duty is fiduciary and it runs to the people of Guyana – not to political relationships, not to commercial familiarity and not to past allegiance.

Section 38 of the Agreement requires that certain steps should already have begun. It binds the Minister, the Government and importantly, the company. Any attempt to circumvent those will be unlawful, an abuse of public office and a breach of the minister’s duty.

He needs to change direction and do the right thing. Legally, he has no choice.

Mr. Deodat Sharma, Auditor General, is reported to have applied for a two-year extension of his tenure. It will be recalled that Mr. Sharma was confirmed many years ago in circumstances best described as accidental, following the absence of an AFC member from the Public Accounts Committee on the day of confirmation. It should also be recalled that the office of Auditor General carries the same constitutional status and security of tenure as the Chancellor of the Judiciary and the Chief Justice.

Approval and any extensions rest with the Executive President.  At the same time, President Irfaan Ali has retained the portfolio of Finance and is therefore constitutionally the Minister of Finance, with Dr. Ashni Singh serving as Senior Minister with responsibility for finance within the Office of the President. It is difficult to find a word that adequately captures this anomaly without offending editorial modesty.

The appointment of the Auditor General is made formally on the advice of the Public Service Commission. That safeguard is illusory. The Commission itself is appointed by, and remains effectively controlled by, the President and is chaired by a close associate of the governing party. This executive-centred circularity, embedded in the 1980 Constitution, is not treated by the ruling party as a flaw but exploited as a feature.

Such a framework is structurally incapable of producing independence. What-ever autonomy exists must come entirely from the personal courage, professional standing and institutional assertiveness of the individual appointed. When those qualities are absent – or discouraged – the office becomes an extension of executive convenience rather than a check upon it. It is in that context that the present request for an extension must be understood: not as a question of continuity, but as a measure of how thoroughly independence has been eroded.

Mr. Sharma is not a professionally qualified accountant and does not meet the statutory requirements ordinarily associated with the office. More troubling than qualification, however, is performance. During a period marked by explosive growth in public expenditure running into tens of billions of dollars, the proliferation of discretionary funds and persistently weak financial systems, the Auditor General has shown zero appetite to challenge, interrogate or even issue timely and meaningful warnings.

A review of the 2020 – 2025 Estimates under the Ali Administration shows an annual expansion of discretionary payments. In addition to the 40-hour part-time employment programme, cost-of-living buffers, community policing stipends and contract employment arrangements, Budget 2026 introduces yet another discretionary initiative, the house repairs programme.

Each of these programmes demands extensive systems audits, rigorous beneficiary verification, reconciliation testing and post-payment forensic review. None has received that level of scrutiny. Taken together, they signal a decisive shift away from rules-based public finance contemplated by the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act toward political control of public funds, with the Auditor General content to observe rather than object.

At the same time, Dr. Singh, as de facto Minister of Finance, has failed to modernise or implement systems capable of tracking, controlling and reporting such spending. This is precisely the environment in which an Auditor General should be demanding additional resources, specialist staff and forensic capacity. Instead, the response has been institutional quiet. Reports are produced on schedule, photographs are taken and deadlines are met – but audit quality, thematic analysis and systemic challenge are absent.

The handling of the Auditor General’s Report for 2024 illustrates the point. It was presented around 30 September 2025 with ceremony. Less than two months later, an “updated” report was delivered on a flash drive, without errata, reconciliation or explanation. This is unprofessional and grave. At best, it signals form over substance; at worst, it raises questions too serious to ignore.

More serious still is what has not been done. Despite clear statutory requirements, the Auditor General has failed year after year to conduct and present annual audits of tax concessions granted under the Income Tax (In Aid of Industry) Act. Billions of dollars in foregone revenue remain effectively unaudited. This is not a marginal omission; it goes to the heart of fiscal accountability and ministerial responsibility.

Parliamentary oversight has fared no better. The Government has made a mockery of the work of the Public Accounts Committee by cynically adjusting quorum requirements and repeatedly failing to attend scheduled meetings. Meetings were cancelled not occasionally but serially – some three, four, even five times in succession, including the 54th Meeting in 2023 and the 68th Meeting in 2024. The result is unprecedented: none of the audit years from 2020 to 2024 has been examined. The Committee’s last Chairman left office publicly regretting that the PAC was unable to discharge its constitutional function for a single year of the Ali Administration. An Auditor General serious about accountability would have raised alarm. Mr. Sharma did not.

What makes the present situation especially corrosive is that fiscal power and audit influence now sit within the same household. The de facto Minister of Finance presides over unprecedented discretionary spending, while his spouse exercises effective authority within the Audit Office as the de facto Auditor General. That arrangement is incompatible with any serious conception of independence. It would be unacceptable if formalised; it is scarcely less objectionable because it is informal.

The Constitution does not contemplate that the power to spend and the power to audit would be consolidated so intimately, nor that the country would be asked to pretend that this is normal.

It now appears that Mr. Sharma’s request for an extension will be granted by default, not on merit, because of a total absence of succession planning. The alternative would be the formal appointment of the current de facto Auditor General, who is also the spouse of the de facto Minister of Finance.

That situation is only marginally better than formal appointment. Whether the conflict is acknowledged or merely tolerated makes little difference in substance. In either case, audit authority would be exercised by a person whose proximity to the centre of fiscal power fatally compromises independence. The distinction between de facto and de jure becomes one of optics rather than principle.

This is not a justification for extension. It is an admission of deliberate, inexcusable and unacceptable governance failure. Succession planning in a constitutional office is not optional; it is a duty. Its neglect has produced a false and manufactured choice: retain an Auditor General who has failed to assert the office in the public interest, or formalise an arrangement that would extinguish even the appearance of audit independence.

Neither option is acceptable.

Business and Economic Commentary

The attempt by Banks DIH Holdings Inc to impose a 15 per cent cap on shareholder voting power through a by-law was never a technical governance adjustment. It was a fundamental challenge to settled principles of company law, shareholder rights, and the constitutional hierarchy established by the Canadian-modelled Guyana’s Companies Act. That hierarchy is the law (Act) – the Company’s Articles – and the Company’s By-laws (if any). Unlike the old Companies Act, by-laws are not compulsory. 

From the outset, the proposal was misconceived. It attempted by by-law to do what the law permits by an amendment of the Articles by special resolution, and to limit voting rights attached to issued shares through vague notions of “acting in concert”.

The company answered a well-meaning call for restraint with costly newspaper advertisements that read more like a diatribe, personally attacking the writer rather than addressing the core legal defect – the impermissibility of altering entrenched shareholder rights by secondary by-laws. None of this cures illegality. Shareholder democracy is preserved by obedience to the law, not by rhetoric.

The High Court has now decisively vindicated that position. Justice Sandil Kissoon held the proposed by-law to be prima facie unlawful, ultra vires the Companies Act, and incapable of lawful ratification, reaffirming that articles confer rights while by-laws remain subordinate.

The ruling is significant beyond Banks DIH Holdings Inc. It reaffirms the rule set out in section 26 of the Companies Act that companies – private or public – with a single class of shares cannot abandon one share, one vote, and that directors cannot assume investigative or enforcement powers reserved by statute to regulators.

Equally important is what this episode reveals about institutional discipline. Guyana’s corporate environment is still maturing, and that process depends on respect for the rule of law, not improvisation. Novelty and good motives do not excuse illegality.

There remains a simple, lawful path for any company genuinely concerned about ownership: propose an amendment to the articles, comply strictly with the Companies Act, disclose fully to shareholders, and secure the requisite supermajority. And importantly, follow the law and provide for a buy-out of dissenting shareholders. Anything less undermines confidence – not only in the company, but in the market itself.

The High Court’s intervention was therefore not an intrusion into corporate affairs, but a necessary reaffirmation of legal boundaries. Companies are creatures of the Companies Act. They must follow the law and recognise the hierarchy of the company’s constituent documents. 

Like DDL, the Banks group has a particular governance problem with the composition and posture of the board. It is a stacked board that appears to labour under the mistaken belief that its primary obligation is loyalty and fealty to the Company’s chairman rather than the high standard of fiduciary duties to the company. Directors are trustees of corporate power, required to exercise independent judgement in the best interests of the company.

Their duty is not even owed to the parent company as an abstract entity. Section 96 of the Companies Act is explicit: “In determining the best interests of the company, directors must have regard to the interests of the company’s employees in general as well as to the interests of the shareholders.” The statute does not permit the subordination of those interests to security of tenure, personal allegiance, historical sentiment, or internal power arrangements.

When boards forget this, governance fails. And when governance fails in a publicly traded company, confidence drains away, shareholders vote through the disposal of their shares, and share price falls. 

Wasting money on full page ads might massage egos. They do nothing for the promotion of shareholder value.

Business & Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction

The release of the preliminary results of Guyana’s 2022 Population and Housing Census on 12 January 2026 was met with a broad sense of relief. After more than a decade without updated demographic data, it offered a first official glimpse of how the country has changed since 2012 and provided long-awaited information for policymakers, analysts, and the private sector. That relief, however, must be set against the delay: enumeration ended in September 2022, and several announced timelines for preliminary results passed unmet.

Placed in an international context, Guyana’s wait is difficult to justify. Countries such as China and India, which together account for well over one-third of the world’s population, published census results years ago, as did other large and administratively complex states. Scale or technical difficulty cannot plausibly explain such a delay in a country of fewer than one million people.

What makes the delay more consequential is what Guyana has been doing since 2012. Major decisions have been made on outdated population data. Hospitals, schools, roads, housing schemes, and social programmes have been planned using census figures more than a decade old, even as the country has undergone rapid demographic and economic change. The placement and scale of hospitals, schools, police stations, courts, and government offices all depend on where people live. Reliance on obsolete data invites mis-location and misallocation, errors that are often costly to undo.

Population growth

The preliminary census results now show why this matters. The population has grown faster than previously announced, reaching about 879,000 by late 2022, an increase of roughly 18% since 2012, and is projected to be close to one million by the end of 2024. The number of households has also risen by nearly one-third to about 272,000, signalling smaller household sizes and increased demand for housing, utilities, transport, schools, and health services. Such shifts should change the dynamics of public spending and action.

Recent budgeting, however, proceeded on a different demographic picture. Appendix B to the 2025 Budget Speech places the mid-year 2024 population at about 780,900, significantly different from what the census now indicates. Understating population size in this way affects per-capita spending, sectoral allocations, and assessments of service demand.

The release of a partial census report should therefore be seen as catch-up rather than progress. Still, it remains incomplete, and priority must now be given to the timely publication of the full results so that planning and policy can rest on a complete, current, and reliable demographic base.

The Preliminary Report and its missing elements

The preliminary census report provides headline population totals, national and regional distribution, urban–rural splits, housing stock counts, and selected demographic characteristics. It confirms strong population growth since 2012, continued urbanisation, and a substantial increase in the number of households. The report also includes initial information on housing conditions relevant to housing policy, infrastructure planning, and service delivery. Taken together, these data establish a more realistic demographic baseline than  the estimates that have guided planning and budgeting in recent years.

What remains outstanding are the detailed analytical tables that give a census its real value, including age and sex profiles by region, migration patterns, education attainment, labour force participation, employment and unemployment, disability, household composition, and housing conditions. Without this detail, it is not possible to assess accurately where school-age populations are concentrated, how the labour force is changing, or where health demand is rising fastest.

The absence of these data also limits serious fiscal and policy analysis. Per-capita spending, poverty targeting, workforce planning, and regional investment decisions depend on demographic detail, not just headline population totals. Until the full outputs are published, much of Guyana’s planning will continue to rest on approximation rather than evidence.

What to expect from the full report

The full census report should provide comprehensive demographic and socio-economic profiles, including age and sex distributions by region, migration flows, education levels, labour force characteristics, household composition, and housing quality. These outputs are essential for investment decisions on health and education, transport, and local and regional services.

Responsibility now rests with the Bureau of Statistics and its supervising ministry to complete and publish these outputs on a clear timetable. The preliminary release has reset the baseline; the full report must now complete the picture.

Conclusion

The preliminary census results are welcome, but they are not an end. They confirm strong population growth, rapid household formation, and accelerating urbanisation – developments that make the prolonged absence of timely data especially consequential in a post-oil economy.

The census is not an unserious matter. It underpins planning, budgeting, service delivery, and accountability. Treating a delayed, partial release as closure risks normalising failure. The task ahead is straightforward: complete the census promptly, professionally, and transparently. Minister Singh must be uncompromising about this.