Category: Business and Economic Commentary

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.  

Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction

The Government of Guyana has announced that it has agreed to accept foreign deportees from the United States – persons who are not Guyanese nationals. The announcement was made calmly, almost casually – by one of the “family” – as if it were a routine domestic arrangement. There was no explanation of the legal basis for such an agreement, no disclosure of its terms, and no acknowledgement of its implications for Guyana’s immigration laws, internal security, or sovereignty. There was no parliamentary debate and no public consultation.

Yet this decision must not be treated as a technical matter. US President Doland Trump has made it clear that he does not regard international law, multilateral agreements, or established norms as binding on the United States, rejecting even frameworks that his own country previously championed. In Trump’s world, power is not limited by law or institutions but only by his personal morality — a position he has stated explicitly and acted upon repeatedly.

Trump world

It is against this backdrop of unilateralism, coercion, and transactional dominance that Guyana’s decision must be understood, not as a neutral administrative arrangement, but as an accommodation made in Trump’s world where rules are increasingly replaced by raw power. A world in which there is open contempt for international law (if at all), of multilateral institutions, and of the sovereignty of weaker states.

Donald Trump has already signalled his willingness to discard global norms at will. He has informed the OECD that the United States will not be bound by the 15% global minimum tax. He has pulled out of almost every international institution not in the US’ interest. And has made it clear that international rules apply to others, not to America. Power, in his worldview, is constrained only by his own judgement.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Venezuela.

Without even a murmur from our otherwise talkative CARICOM leaders, including our own President Irfaan Ali, Trump’s administration has used brute military force in the Caribbean, resulting in the deaths of civilians off the Venezuelan coast. U.S. forces seized the leader of a sovereign state and removed him and his wife in handcuffs. This was not multilateral action, not international law enforcement, and not humanitarian intervention. It was unilateral power, exercised openly and without restraint. The Caribbean as a zone of peace has become a zone of fear.

It is oil, stupid

From Trump himself, it is all about oil. The United States has effectively taken control of the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Trump has announced that Venezuelan oil fields will be restored, production ramped up, exports controlled, and prices influenced — with him deciding how much revenue will be returned to the Venezuelan people. This is not regime change in disguise. It is resource capture unlike any seen for more than several decades. It makes Afghanistan, Iraq and Grenada look like exercises in restraint by comparison.

Trump is not finished. He has shown himself willing to overturn democratic outcomes at home, to threaten friendly states abroad, and to redraw spheres of influence as if international law were an inconvenience. He speaks casually of peace with Russia while demanding a substantial share of Ukraine’s future in return. He does not need international law. He is international law. His narcissism has led to the so-called Donroe Doctrine, infinitely worse than the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 which the US claimed the Caribbean as its sphere of influence. But the Caribbean is not enough. He wants Greenland and maybe, later, Canada.

And it is at precisely this moment that Guyana appears eager not only to accept foreign deportees at Washington’s request, but also to deepen defence cooperation with the same administration now destabilising the region. We refused renegotiation of the 2016 Agreement in place of sovereignty. Now we surrender our dignity, our laws, our patrimony posing as neutrality.

More oil less money

That brings us to the most immediate and dangerous consequence for Guyana.

Donald Trump has announced his intention to use Venezuelan oil to drive the global price of crude down to US$50 per barrel. If he succeeds – and there is no effective international mechanism to prevent it – the impact on Guyana will be severe. At this price, Guyana’s oil revenue will collapse. The State would receive approximately US$1 per barrel in royalty and about US$7.50 in profit oil. With NRF funding accounting for 50% of the National Budget, we will experience increased and unsustainable budget deficits -or raid the NRF.

The Government would face three options, none of them attractive: heavy and expensive borrowing, sharp expenditure cuts, and drastic shortage of foreign exchange. Borrowing on that scale would undermine debt sustainability. Spending cuts would fall on wages, social programmes, infrastructure, and transfers – areas that have expanded rapidly in anticipation of sustained oil revenues.

Foreign exchange shortages would follow quickly. With oil inflows reduced, the supply of U.S. dollars would tighten just as import demand remains high. Pressure on the exchange rate would intensify. The cost of food, fuel, medicine, and construction materials would rise sharply. Inflation would not be a statistical abstraction; compounding the already his cost of living, the poor would suffer.

America hasn’t always been a friend of Guyana. Just read The West on Trial. As we turn our backs on countries that supported us during our darkest days, let us not forget our past. Guyana needs to face the dangers of the path of accommodation.

It must read the winds that can blow our house down. The finance minister hinted at an oil price adjustment in his mid-year report. That was before Trump had got his hands on Venezuela’s oil. The whole vision of One Guyana will evaporate. 

Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram

Introduction

On November 26, 2025, Stabroek News reported Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, as saying that he was “still awaiting a clear update” on the long-delayed 2022 Population and Housing Census, that he was unsure what caused the delay, and that he intended to raise the matter with the Chief Statistician “very soon.” Such an explanation might pass from an ordinary minister. Dr Singh is not. It might also be excusable if the issue were routine. This particular census is neither. And it might still be tolerable if the delay were brief. It is now measured in years.

For all these reasons, Dr Singh’s explanation is bewildering at best. He has the honour – and the responsibility – of presenting annual budgets exceeding one trillion dollars, allocating resources across an expanding landscape of ministries, departments, agencies, regions, and sectors.

That task demands the most current and reliable demographic and socio-economic data available. It cannot responsibly and properly be discharged by guesswork, political preference, or incremental increases carried over from the past. A population and housing census is precisely the dataset that anchors such decisions. For the Senior Minister responsible for Finance to accept – assuming his account is accurate – a state of affairs in which that foundational data is unavailable, unexplained, and unmanaged is not merely regrettable. It borders on incredible.

The explanation is not merely puzzling in a political sense; it is difficult to reconcile with the statutory framework governing official statistics in Guyana. The Statistics Act does not contemplate an open-ended census process, nor does it permit foundational national data to drift indefinitely without explanation or accountability. Censuses are not peripheral outputs. They are universally regarded as core state functions.

The statutory, governance framework

The Bureau of Statistics does not operate in isolation. It is governed by a Board chaired by the Finance Secretary – who operationally reports direct to the Minister – with the Chief Statistician as Vice-Chair, and comprising senior public officials. Oversight of the Bureau therefore sits squarely within the financial and administrative architecture of the State. Delays of this magnitude cannot occur unseen, unexplained, or unmanaged at that level.

Nor does responsibility end with Dr. Singh. In a move that is unprecedented, was never explained, and is not clearly understood, President Ali has not allocated finance to its own minister. Under our constitutional framework, Finance is therefore retained within the Office of the President, and responsibility for Statistics has been allocated to no other minister. In such circumstances, prolonged non-delivery cannot be treated as an operational mishap. It becomes an executive failure that points directly to Dr. Singh and indirectly to President Ali.

What makes this failure especially troubling is that in response to calls for the report to be published, the public have been fed with a mixture of excuses and promises have been made for the release of the report. This is no longer a single lapse. It is a pattern. Years have passed and another beckons. The Census has now outlived one Board of the Bureau of Statistics and is approaching the end of the tenure of its successor. The impending expiry of the current Board heightens that failure. A governing body chaired by the Finance Secretary, with the Chief Statistician as Vice-Chair, and populated by senior public officials, will have completed its term without delivering the most important statistical output of the decade.

Boards are appointed to govern, to supervise, and to ensure delivery. When a board’s term expires without results, responsibility gives way to accountability – not excuses. It does not roll forward automatically to the next appointment. This is therefore a moment of reckoning. As 2025 draws to a close, the continued absence of the 2022 census cannot be treated as an inherited problem, a technical delay, or a matter awaiting engagement “very soon.” Without the proverbial bogeyman of the PNC or the Coalition, the ownership of this failure – spanning years, boards, and budgets – belongs 100% to the Ali Administration. At year-end, responsibility cannot be deferred any further – it must be owned and acted upon.

Broader functions in peril

What makes this failure even more troubling is that the Statistics Act does not contemplate a single, isolated census. It provides for several distinct censuses and large-scale statistical exercises – including population and housing, labour force, household expenditure and other socio-economic surveys – each separate in scope, but all essential to decision-making, public administration, and management applying evidence-based governance. The Act also gives the Bureau latitude, with ministerial approval, to undertake additional censuses and surveys as circumstances require. In other words, the population and housing census is not the sole output of the statistical system, but the cornerstone upon which the others rest.

The prolonged non-delivery of that cornerstone therefore raises unavoidable questions about the wider statistical architecture of the State. If the most comprehensive, best-resourced, and most anticipated census cannot be brought to completion and publication, what confidence can be placed in the timeliness, reliability, or even the existence of other censuses mandated or permitted by law? Planning on social and physical infrastructure, skills requirements and availability, poverty measurement, household consumption analysis and intercensal estimates all depend, directly or indirectly, on the population baseline. The failure to publish the 2022 casts a shadow over the entire system of official statistics and weakens the informational foundation on which policy decisions are made and national finances are allocated.

There is an additional and more troubling consequence of this prolonged inaction. In the political sphere, the absence of inconvenient data may be tolerable, even advantageous. It allows narrative to substitute for evidence, delays scrutiny, and permits claims of progress to go largely untested. In management, however, the same absence is dangerous. Decisions made without reliable baseline data distort priorities, misallocate resources, and entrench inefficiencies. Political convenience in the short term is almost always harmful in the long run.

Conclusion

As the year draws to a close, this matter can no longer be left to drift. The imminent expiry of the current Board makes inaction dangerously unacceptable. If the 2022 Population and Housing Census is to retain any value, the President and the Senior Minister responsible for Finance must act decisively: appoint a new Board without delay, with a clear and public mandate to bring the exercise to publication within a fixed timeframe.

Anything less would constitute a governance failure that has already persisted far too long.