Introduction
The 2026 Mid-Year Report raises serious questions about the quality of economic and financial stewardship under Dr. Ashni Singh, the Minister responsible for Finance. My two previous commentaries dealt with the confusion surrounding the housing figures and the omission of the Berbice Bridge transaction, involving at least $400 million of public money. This final examination, apart from the National Insurance Scheme which I will address separately on Sunday, considers other matters a serious mid-year assessment ought to have confronted.
Growth without enough analysis
The standout figures for the first half of 2026 are real GDP growth of 33.3% and non-oil growth of 10.1%, against full-year projections of 20.8% and 10.2%. Overall growth is therefore projected to slow sharply in the second half while non-oil growth remains almost unchanged. There may be sound technical explanations, but that is precisely what the Report should provide.
More fundamentally, the Report is rich in macroeconomic statistics but weak in analysing their relationships. Government capital expenditure approached $250 billion in the first half, while construction contributed strongly to non-oil growth. In an economy where petroleum revenues finance extraordinary public expenditure, how much non-oil growth is genuinely independent of oil, and how much is oil-funded Government spending appearing elsewhere?
That matters if diversification is to mean more than converting petroleum revenue into construction, contracts and consumption. With a Budget theme of “Putting People First,” the Report should show more clearly how spectacular growth is translating into the experience of households and businesses.
Foreign exchange
The foreign-exchange market provides a striking example of what the Report failed adequately to confront. Only days after its release, President Ali disclosed outstanding foreign-currency demand at commercial banks exceeding US$200 million and involved former Finance Minister Asgar Ally in examining the market.
A country reporting exceptional GDP growth, massive oil exports and substantial foreign inflows should not have businesses struggling for foreign currency without a clear explanation from the Minister responsible for Finance. After almost six years back in the portfolio, why has it become necessary to bring in a former Finance Minister from decades ago to analyse the problem? What is driving the demand? Is it temporary or structural? Those are Mid-Year Report questions, not matters that should emerge afterwards through presidential intervention.
The Census
Then there is the 2022 Population and Housing Census, which falls within Dr. Singh’s portfolio through the Bureau of Statistics. Census Day was in September 2022, yet only preliminary results were released in January 2026 and the detailed information needed for serious planning remains unavailable.
Government is making major decisions about migration, social services, policing, housing, schools, hospitals and labour supply without the complete demographic information that should underpin them. The problem becomes even more obvious when the Report itself says that the national challenge has shifted from job creation to the availability and composition of skills.
How can Government plan confidently for labour, population and allocation of resources when its principal demographic exercise remains incomplete? More staggeringly, why is Dr. Singh not putting greater effort into getting it done?
Taxation – the larger failure
Taxation is another area in which Guyana’s circumstances have changed dramatically while policy has not kept pace. Oil has transformed the scale and structure of the public finances. That should have prompted a reassessment of what taxes remain necessary, how the burden should be distributed, which exemptions and concessions remain justified and how much recurrent expenditure can safely depend on petroleum revenues.
The Duke study, commissioned under the PPP/C administration, had already identified important structural weaknesses, but its recommendations were largely left unimplemented. The Coalition later established its own Tax Reform Committee and sought to implement parts of that agenda. The PPP/C attacked several of those changes without offering a comprehensive alternative.
Dr. Singh cannot now treat these as inherited problems. He has occupied the finance portfolio for long periods, before and during the oil era, and therefore bears substantial responsibility for the failure to modernise the tax system and articulate a coherent policy for taxation in a petroleum economy.
Even allowing every excuse for the absence of comprehensive reform, how does Singh explain his failure to keep the statutory tax appeal machinery continuously functioning? There have been periods extending beyond a year when the relevant Boards of Review were not in existence or operation. No moderately efficient tax administration should function in that manner. Taxpayers are denied timely independent review and the State’s revenue claims may remain unresolved.
Annual adjustments to thresholds, rates, exemptions, VAT, corporation tax and property tax are not a substitute for reform. Nor can oil revenues disguise the absence of policy. Dr. Singh should be able to explain the future role of taxation and how dependence on petroleum revenues is to be managed.
He has not done so.
An overall assessment
Except for the National Insurance Scheme, to which I will return separately on Sunday, this brings my examination of the 2026 Mid-Year Report to an end.
The problem is larger than any one confusing figure or omitted transaction. The problem is the quality of the Report as an instrument of economic and financial accountability. It contains abundant statistics and expenditure totals, but too little analysis of what they mean, too little treatment of important risks and too little connection between aggregate growth and the experience of citizens and businesses.
Section 67 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act requires more. The Report is intended to inform Parliament and the public about the macroeconomic and fiscal position, the outlook, significant variances and major fiscal risks.
Judged against that purpose, the Report is disappointing at best. At worst, it has too many features of an amateur exercise: impressive numbers without sufficient explanation, important relationships left unexplored, major weaknesses inadequately confronted and, in the Berbice Bridge case, critical and controversial information omitted altogether.
After so many years with responsibility for the finance portfolio, these cannot be dismissed as the errors of an inexperienced Minister. They are failures for which Dr. Singh must accept direct responsibility.
Christopher Ram
25 Sept. 2026