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2026 Mid-Year Report – Confusion, Omissions and Ashni Singh – Part 3
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
OPEN LETTER TO MINISTERS EDGHILL AND WALROND
Dear Ministers,
I returned to Guyana yesterday evening after a journey involving nearly twenty hours. Immigration and Customs were a breeze. Everything went well until we reached Friendship on the East Bank. What followed was among the most chaotic and mismanaged public sector activities imaginable. For the better part of an hour there was little movement of traffic in either direction. Heavy and construction vehicles competed for road space, government vehicles with sirens forced their way through, and there appeared to be no system for keeping traffic moving.
Minister Edghill, you are responsible for road construction and, surely, for managing its consequences. Where are the signs, controlled diversions and arrangements for construction vehicles entering and leaving the roadway? Where are the personnel to ensure that road works do not themselves bring traffic to a standstill? Have these responsibilities been farmed out along with the construction contracts?The Roads Act, Cap. 51 is not concerned merely with constructing roads. It contemplates their supervision and management. Contractors cannot simply be permitted to occupy and interfere with public roads white motorists and the public are left to fend for themselves.
Minister Walrond, the Police cannot be spectators. The road traffic legislation expressly empowers the Police to intervene where abnormal traffic requires directions to relieve congestion and prevent obstruction. Traffic management and enforcement are plainly police responsibilities.
The two Ministries cannot pass responsibility between themselves. Public Works must manage the consequences ot construction; the Police must manage and enforce the movement of traffic. What we see instead is an extraordinary failure of coordination between two arms of the same Government.
Even if you are insensitive to the hardship and frustration inflicted on the public, you cannot be unaware of the serious economic cost and reputational damage. Thousands of persons losing thirty minutes or an hour each day means thousands of productive hours lost. Fuel is wasted, employees arrive late, deliveries are delayed and costs ripple through the economy. And consider the message to visitors. They arrive in a country celebrated for extraordinary economic growth and massive infrastructure spending, only to leave the airport and encounter stationary traffic, construction vehicles, inadequate signage and unmitigated disorder.
What makes the situation particularly unacceptable is that it is neither new nor temporary. It has persisted for years. After all that time, the continuing chaos can no longer be explained away as inconvenience caused by development. It represents a sustained failure of planning, coordination and ministerial oversight. Ministers, on traffic management your performance has moved beyond poor administration to something approaching dereliction of responsibility.
Minister Walrond, you were recently moved from Tourism to Home Affairs. What would the Minister of Tourism have said about the impression being created by the traffic management for which the Minister of Home Affairs now shares responsibility? Guyana boasts one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Yet on one of the country’s principal arteries, between its international airport and its capital, traffic management can be among the slowest and worst imaginable. That contradiction should embarrass a government spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure.
Ministers, this is not an occasional inconvenience. It is a prolonged and serious management failure. Please tell the public who is responsible, what arrangements exist between Public Works, its contractors and the Police and, more importantly, what you individually and together – are going to do about it.
Christopher Ram
24- Sep-26
Mid-Year 2026 Report – Confusion: Berbice Bridge, Ashni Singh and Non-Sanctity of Contract
Yesterday’s commentary on the 2026 Mid-Year Report dealt with how housing was reported. Today’s concerns something potentially more serious involving the Berbice Bridge – a project dogged by controversy from its conception more than two decades ago. The omission is inexplicable and far too consequential to dismiss as an oversight by a Senior Minister.
This current round did not mysteriously emerge in September 2026. In August 2025, President Irfaan Ali said publicly that Government was already in the final stages of negotiations to acquire the Bridge and, significantly, that “the Minister of Finance is leading that.” By August 21, 2026, Singh had therefore been leading the negotiations for a full year. On that date, the members of Berbice Bridge Company Inc. (BBCI) resolved that the company be wound up voluntarily and appointed chartered accountant Raan Motilall as liquidator.
The Mid-Year Report is dated August 28, a week after that event, although it was not released until September 14. Yet the 119-page Report contains not a word about the proposed “acquisition” of BBCI by an over-accommodating Government, following negotiations which President Ali had said Singh was leading, or about the company’s August 21 decision to enter voluntary liquidation.
Yet within days of its release, the public learnt that Government had paid out $400 million in the very transaction the Report had ignored. This was no peripheral matter carelessly omitted from a long report.
A so-called explanation subsequently given by former BBCI Chairman Paul Cheong makes the transaction even more difficult to understand. Government did not, strictly speaking, pay $400 million to BBCI for the Bridge. Cheong says it bought all 400 million issued ordinary shares at $1 each, with the money paid to the existing shareholders.
That distinction is fundamental. A sale of existing shares is a transaction between seller and purchaser. The company does not receive the purchase price; its role is principally to recognise and register the transfer. If Government bought all the ordinary shares, it acquired ownership of those shares and the rights attaching to them; that did not, by itself, terminate or reverse the liquidation.
Once the shareholders resolved to wind up BBCI, the position changed completely. The winding-up took effect from the date of the resolution and any subsequent transfer of shares was void unless made to or with the sanction of the liquidator. If the $400 million transaction occurred after August 21, did Motilall sanction it? If before, why did Government buy the shares of a company whose members were about to put it into liquidation?
Significantly, the Government is no innocent outsider. Through NICIL, its investment arm, it was already part of BBCI’s corporate structure and held the special or “golden” share with substantial veto rights.
A share sale does not dispose of the company’s assets or liabilities. Liquidation does. What, then, was left for Motilall to liquidate? What assets and liabilities remained? What became of the preference shares, bonds and other financial instruments? And how did the winding-up fit into Government’s purchase of the ordinary shares?
As a measure of value, the claim that Government acquired an $8 billion Bridge for only $400 million is wrong, mischievous and misleading. The number of shares in issue tells us nothing about the value of the company. BBCI could have had four million shares instead of 400 million and Government could still have agreed to pay $400 million, or whatever sum. Multiplying 400 million shares by $1 is an arithmetic exercise, not a valuation.
Nor does Cheong’s reference to a $1 “nominal value” help. Guyana abolished par or nominal value for shares when the Companies Act 1991 came into force in 1995. If Government agreed to pay $1 per share, that was the purchase price, not some legally prescribed value.
The real valuation issue lies in the Concession Agreement. BBCI never owned the Bridge in perpetuity. It operated under a fixed-term concession due to expire in 2027. Under the Berbice River Bridge Act and the Concession Agreement, the Bridge and related rights and assets were to pass to Government at the end of the concession period, free of the relevant liens and encumbrances and in the condition required by the concession.
And what became of the Government’s much-vaunted principle of the “sanctity of contract”? President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo have repeatedly invoked that principle in relation to Exxon and the 2016 Petroleum Agreement. Yet here was another contract involving the State, with a clear end date and a clear obligation to transfer the Bridge to Government. If sanctity of contract is the inviolable principle Government says it is, why was the State paying $400 million for shares in the concessionaire only months before the contractual handover?
Sanctity cannot be an immutable principle when dealing with ExxonMobil and an inconvenience when dealing with the Berbice Bridge.
By September 2026, only months remained before the contractual handover. The relevant question is therefore not what the Bridge cost to build nearly twenty years earlier, nor the historical value of BBCI. Under the Concession Agreement, Government was shortly to receive the Bridge and the rights and assets required to be transferred with it. BBCI would remain responsible for its other assets, liabilities and obligations. Why, then, did Government need to buy BBCI’s ordinary shares at all – and what did the $400 million purchase give the State beyond what it was entitled to under the Concession Agreement?
Nor is there any basis yet for assuming that $400 million was the entire cost and obligation to the State. BBCI had obligations and securities beyond its ordinary shares. Its audited financial statements disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars in other obligations. Until there is a complete accounting of the liabilities, preference shares, debt instruments and any obligations assumed or discharged directly or indirectly by Government, the transaction should properly be described as involving at least $400 million, and potentially more.
Liquidation is a process that includes the statutory order of payment to all stakeholders. It is unfair to expect Ashni Singh and Paul Cheong to understand all its legal implications. And so I have to ask: where was the Attorney General, the principal legal adviser to the Government? A transaction of this nature surely demanded competent and independent legal advice. The failure to obtain or heed such advice may bring into play an even more critical piece of legislation – the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA).
This is no longer simply about whether Government negotiated a good or bad bargain. Section 31 of the FMAA regulates the requisition and payment of public money and requires the necessary certification before payment. Section 48 goes further: a Minister or official shall not “misuse, misapply, or improperly dispose of public moneys.” Section 49 provides for personal liability where a loss of public money is caused or contributed to through misconduct or deliberate or serious disregard of reasonable standards of care.
On the basis of publicly available information, there is no finding of statutory breaches. But their existence can change the character of the questions Government must answer. Who gave the legal advice? Who authorised and certified the payment? What valuation supported it? And what precisely did the State acquire for its money?
On housing, the problem was the disjointed inclusion of information in the Mid-Year Report. On the Berbice Bridge, it was the opposite – the exclusion of critical information within the knowledge of Dr. Singh. If $400 million – and potentially much more – of public money was paid out when it ought not to have been paid, the issue goes far beyond an omission from an accountability report. It raises questions of misuse or misapplication of public money and personal liability for loss of public funds, matters for which sections 48 and 49 of the FMAA expressly provide.
Christopher Ram
September 22, 2026
Mid-year Report – Confusion: Housing Report, Finance Ministry and Ashni Singh
On September 17, 2026, on chrisram.net, I published a letter entitled “CHPA and its Performance,” raising questions about the quality of financial and performance reporting by the Central Housing and Planning Authority. I indicated then that I would examine the Government’s 2026 Mid-Year Report more fully. Having now done so, the housing section – and the role of Dr. Ashni Singh, the Minister Responsible for Finance – reinforce those concerns.
The Report states that $89.9 billion of the $159.1 billion housing-sector allocation was spent in the first half of 2026, describing the expenditure as being “to expand affordable housing for citizens.” That description is misleadingly broad, since the housing programme also encompasses major infrastructure, community facilities, Silica City and other expenditure which cannot simply be equated with affordable housing. If the $89.9 billion includes expenditure on roads, drains, street lighting, industrial areas, recreational facilities and major developments still in progress, then the Report should say so and identify how much was spent on each major component. Without that breakdown, the reader cannot tell what proportion of the $89.9 billion actually went to houses or house lots, what went to infrastructure and community works, and what went to longer-term projects such as Silica City.
Clearly, the problem is not a shortage of numbers. It is that, presented as they are by Singh, they make very little sense as an account of expenditure. They are neither reconciled nor adequately explained and, for purposes of determining what the $89.9 billion actually purchased, are largely meaningless. Instead of a coherent account showing where the money went, the reader is given a succession of disparate statistics: lots allocated, titles distributed, houses constructed, developments completed or in progress, street lamps installed, subsidies provided, applications processed, and recreational spaces and industrial areas under development.
The sheer quantity of numbers should not be mistaken for accountability. What Dr. Singh fails to provide is the information that matters: expenditure by programme and project; the cost of completed works; expenditure to date on unfinished works; the relationship between money spent and physical progress; material variations from budget; and some basis upon which the National Assembly and the public can judge the use made of nearly $90 billion.
The deficiencies are therefore not merely matters of presentation or drafting. When expenditure of this magnitude is reported without the information necessary to assess it, public scrutiny is weakened and financial accountability is reduced to a cash spent statement. A country dealing with public expenditure on this scale is entitled to considerably better reporting.
That responsibility cannot simply be laid at the door of CHPA. Dr. Singh presents both the annual Budget and the Mid-Year Report. The Budget sets out the Government’s account of past performance and its policies, allocations and targets for the current year; the Mid-Year Report is intended to report on their implementation. The defective quality of that financial reporting therefore falls squarely within the portfolio for which Dr. Singh is responsible.
On top of this, there is a curious institutional confusion surrounding the finance portfolio. Dr. Singh’s formal – and cumbersome – title is Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance. The Office of the President stated on his appointment that responsibility for finance was placed within the Office of the President, which would retain its oversight role. Yet the 2026 National Estimates contain “Agency 03 – Ministry of Finance”, identify Dr. Singh as the Minister responsible for that agency, and describe its functions as those of “the Ministry”.
The Government also operates a Ministry of Finance website and issues its Budget documents under that name. The Gazette arrangements recognise a Ministry of Finance, but there is no separately styled Minister of Finance: the political responsibility remains with Dr. Singh in his capacity as Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance. The problem may therefore be wider than the housing numbers. The Government’s own documents do not present a wholly coherent institutional picture: finance is retained within the Office of the President, while for budgeting and administration a Ministry of Finance continues to exist and operate under Singh’s responsibility.
Whatever explains that strange arrangement, accountability cannot be allowed to become equally confused. Dr. Singh presents the Budget and the Mid-Year Report, while President Ali retained oversight of finance within the Office of the President. Between them, there should be no uncertainty about who bears responsibility for ensuring that the country receives a clear, coherent and intelligible account of how its money is being spent.
Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded Column 201
Time for the Sanctity of Contract Circus to come to an end.
President Irfaan Ali recycles the argument so often that it is now official doctrine: the 2016 Stabroek Block Petroleum Agreement is a bad deal for Guyana, but “sanctity of contract” prevents renegotiation. In his recent Al Jazeera interview, Ali again asserted the Agreement was bad and the companies benefited more, yet continued to invoke sanctity as though that answered the issue.
Ali knows no serious critic is suggesting Guyana should renege on the Agreement. Reneging means refusing to honour a contract; renegotiation means asking the other parties to agree to different terms. If they agree, the amended agreement becomes the contract to be honoured. Ali’s conflation of the two is not merely mistaken but disingenuous. It turns a lawful request for better terms into an accusation of contractual dishonour and smacks of evasion.
Guyana cannot compel renegotiation or impose an amendment unilaterally. But it can ask. The contractors may refuse. What remains difficult to explain is why the Ali Administration refuses to ask.
The sanctity argument is debunked by facts Ali rarely acknowledges. The 1999 Petroleum Agreement was replaced by the 2016 Agreement, itself the product of a renegotiation of the contractual relationship. Exxon’s own then Country Manager described the 2016 PSA as a renegotiation. The 2016 Agreement was later amended in 2019 over the treatment of the 2% royalty. ExxonMobil and its partners did not walk away. They accepted the new arrangement and continued investing.
Did Ali not know about sanctity when, before taking office, he thunderously promised to “review and renegotiate” the petroleum contracts? Or is sanctity a principle he discovered only after assuming office? His earlier commitment is a matter of public record. In February 2020, he said everything was on the table for review and renegotiation.
The President also repeatedly raised the prospect that the oil companies might leave if Guyana presses for better terms. Yet his own Administration previously argued, in resisting ring-fencing, the circumstances change once investments are made. They will not walk. More importantly, the petroleum industry is replete with renegotiations – in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Bolivia, Ecuador and Ghana, sometimes more than once. Some were difficult and some governments went far beyond anything being suggested for Guyana. In most cases the companies stayed. Where companies did leave, the circumstances commonly involved nationalisation, imposed terms or economics that became commercially unattractive.
That is fundamentally different from a host government asking for consensual discussions. Stabroek is not marginal acreage. It is a developed and highly productive petroleum province with enormous discoveries, several producing projects, established infrastructure and billions of dollars already invested. The geological and commercial risks today are vastly different from those existing when the Agreement was signed in 2016. Ali himself concedes the bargain favoured the companies, yet behaves as though those transformed circumstances are irrelevant.
There is another point routinely obscured. Esso is the Operator, charged under Article 2.2 with conducting the day-to-day activities, but the Contractor comprises three parties. Those interests are held by Exxon, Chevron and CNOOC. The Agreement makes the distinction explicit and makes the obligations of the parties comprising the Contractor joint and several.
Government should therefore write formally to each of the companies, setting out the Guyana proposes to discuss and request individual responses. There is no reason to assume beforehand that three separate companies, with different ownership, commercial interests and relationships with Guyana, must inevitably take the same position.
In CNOOC’s case, Guyana also retains a substantial diplomatic relationship with China. There would be nothing improper in Government using its relationship with the Chinese Embassy to communicate the seriousness with which Guyana approaches the matter and its desire for constructive engagement. Diplomacy cannot rewrite a commercial contract, but neither should a sovereign state neglect legitimate diplomatic channels where they may assist.
The Government should also explain the legal basis of its position. The Attorney General is, under Article 112 of the Constitution, the principal legal adviser to the Government of Guyana. Yet the public defence of the Agreement has come principally from President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo and the Minister of Natural Resources. If “sanctity of contract” is being presented as a legal impediment to even seeking renegotiation, then Guyanese are entitled to know whether it is in fact the considered advice of the Attorney General.
The Government retains constitutional and other legal experts from across the Caribbean for matters in which it considers specialist advice necessary. Ali recently spoke of obtaining experts on contract financing in an area where the Agreement gives Guyana limited direct control. Yet on the fundamental legal question whether the State may formally seek consensual amendments to an agreement worth many billions of dollars to the country, no considered legal opinion has been placed before the public.
If the Government is serious, it should stop speculating about what the companies might do, and proceed to establish. Put a formal written proposal to Exxon, Chevron and CNOOC separately, identifying the provisions Guyana wishes to revisit, and publish the responses. If all three refuse, the country will at least know that the companies have closed the door. Until then, every assertion that they would “walk away” is conjecture being used to justify inaction.
Ali must stop the charade and come clean with the public. If his Administration has made a political decision that the 2016 Agreement will not be touched, let him say so plainly, and boldly accept responsibility for that decision. He should stop dressing a policy choice in the language of legal inevitability.
That decision is not about one year or one budget. It is a decision to preserve for decades a bargain whose roots go back to 1999 and whose 2016 terms can govern the exploitation of Guyana’s principal petroleum resource far into this century. It is a bargain under which Guyana receives only a 2% royalty, shares profit oil after cost recovery, has to contribute to decommissioning, and assumes the contractors’ income-tax liability through the machinery of the Agreement. If Ali intends to leave those extraordinary concessions untouched for another generation and more, then that is his decision and he should man up to it.
He cannot continue blaming “sanctity of contract” for a result his own Government chooses to preserve. If Guyanese are forced to live with the consequences of this Agreement into the latter part of the century, they are entitled to know this is not some unavoidable command of contract law. It is President Irfaan Ali’s and the PPP/C’s political choice.