Category: Business and Economic Commentary

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.  

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.