Business & Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
Introduction
This column took issue with the announcement of a $10 billion allocation to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), the Government’s quick fix to decades of weak supervision and administrative failure dating back almost to the Scheme’s inception in 1969. Now, even the accuracy of the sum is in doubt. In the 2025 Budget Speech, the Government stated that it would be “injecting $10 billion into the Scheme” to provide a one-off grant to persons aged 60 and over with between 500 and 749 contributions.
To the ordinary citizen, that language conveyed that a long-standing injustice had finally been addressed and that the NIS itself was being strengthened after years of failure. The ordinary citizen must be forgiven for believing the country’s First Citizen and accepting his announcement.
But viewed alongside a series of prior assurances – the promise to review and renegotiate the 2016 Petroleum Agreement, the promised cash grant before Christmas, the commitment to establish an Anti-Corruption Unit, and the President’s undertaking to ensure the proper administration of the Access to Information regime – a clear pattern emerges. Language is repeatedly expressed in terms of certainty and resolution, only to be later reinterpreted, repurposed, delayed, or quietly abandoned once its immediate political purpose has been served.
After enough such episodes, these assurances cannot be treated as genuine commitments, or even as reliable statements of intention. Delivered at moments of pressure and framed to sound decisive, they have repeatedly had the effect of deceiving the public into believing that action would follow, when experience suggests otherwise.
The $10 Billion question
What, then, does this have to do with the $10 billion “injection” into the NIS?
Appendix C of Volume I of the 2025 Estimates discloses an outward cash flow within the Public Enterprise accounts of the NIS. That Parliament authorised the spending of real money is not in dispute. What is not clear is whether there was any upfront injection at all, or merely authority for payments to be made over time as claims are processed. The Estimates, it seems, describe a payment programme rather than a strengthening of the Scheme.
Given the significance of this much-touted initiative, I sought clarification from the 2025 Mid-Year Report published on November 3, 2025 by the Ministry of Finance, which exercises portfolio responsibility for the NIS. Regrettably, the report was most unhelpful. Making no reference to the $10 billion allocation, paragraph 3.54 stated: “During the first half of 2025, the National Insurance Scheme reported higher collections from contributions of $2.3 billion.” There was no disclosure of how much of the $10 billion had been disbursed, to whom, or by bands.
This omission raises obvious questions about how much of the $10 billion has been paid, how many beneficiaries have received payments, how those payments are distributed across contribution bands, and how the funds are being accounted for. Because the NIS is perennially late in publishing its annual reports – the most recent available being for 2022 – the public is left to speculate about matters that ought to be transparently reported.
Pattern of non-disclosure
That distinction matters because the NIS is a statutory social-insurance scheme, funded by compulsory contributions from workers and employers, and governed by legal duties of transparency, reporting, and actuarial oversight. Those duties have been honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Statutory reports have frequently been tabled several years late, depriving the public of timely information on performance, investments, and sustainability.
The consequences are not abstract. In one case, an elderly contributor waited nearly two decades for an appeal to be heard, only for management to challenge the decision again, despite the long-vacant post of National Insurance Commissioner. Such experiences are not aberrations; they are the predictable consequences of systemic dysfunction.
There is a deeper, structural failure. Although the law requires a five-yearly actuarial review, successive governments have failed to address the 2016 actuarial review warning about contribution adequacy, benefit structures, demographic pressures, and long-term viability.
Systemic and institutional challenges
These failures are rooted in systemic and design weaknesses. The NIS remains effectively controlled by the Government of the day, with ministerial appointment of the Board too often favouring political compatibility over independence or expertise. Without an independent Board, meaningful oversight is weakened and holding management responsible for entrenched inefficiencies becomes almost impossible.
Equally troubling is the legislative stagnation surrounding the Scheme. The National Insurance Act has remained structurally unchanged for more than half a century, despite profound changes in Guyana’s economy, labour market, and demographics. A social-insurance system frozen in legislative time cannot be expected to function effectively in a vastly changed society.
Management also operates under chronic resource constraints that no serious reform effort should ignore. The NIS today serves a contributor and beneficiary base many times larger than when its staffing levels, systems, and physical infrastructure were designed. Without sustained investment in modern systems and adequate personnel, delays, errors, and backlogs become inevitable rather than exceptional.
Conclusion
Seen against this record of weak governance, legislative stagnation, and administrative incapacity, the significance of the $10 billion grant lies not in its size, but in what it leaves untouched. Effective social security is not measured by the size of a headline figure but by its predictability, fairness, transparency, social awareness, respect for contributors’ rights, and, not least, efficiency. Until the NIS is freed from excessive political control, its legislative and governance framework modernised, is properly resourced both physically and technologically, professionally managed, and subjected to genuine actuarial discipline, these problems will remain and become worse.
And the question posed by this column remains unavoidable: is the $10 billion grant an act of compassion – or another opportunistic attempt to gloss over the result of a system that those in authority have long neglected?