New money spending

Sep 27, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The PPPC Government has a set of standing tricks which is used to fool unsuspecting citizens. Billions are spent and all that citizens get from the government are carefully worded packages that conceal more than they reveal. Oil funds, borrowed funds, budgeted funds, Consolidated Account funds, and they all end up in the same tight spaces. Two examples should suffice, one old and worn, the other new and already manifesting its weakness.

The old is represented by the billions of US dollars which have been withdrawn from the Natural Resource Fund (NRF), with almost automatic precision year after year since its inception. After that action, the billions disappear into a thick, impenetrable jungle. We at this paper can only see it one way: deliberate obscuring of the money that belongs to all citizens by a clever government. What to make of billions of US dollars grabbed from the NRF, when the accounting presented by the government is “national development priorities”? That is an all-purpose bucket into which any amount of dollars can be dumped, and anything can be said of how those are spent. National development priorities do not inform citizens of on what, where, when, and how much was spent on specific projects and programmes. That is part of the trick of the PPPC Government’s accounting for billions of taxpayers’ dollars. Offer something for public consumption, when the reality is about saying nothing. What are the specifics of a billion or 10 billion expended on any one project? It could be in Berbice, it could be in Essequibo and to the deeper parts of it, or it could be in Demerara. With the billions withdrawn from the NRF and the other billions borrowed, projects that are the essences of “national development priorities” could be taking shape in all three counties of Guyana.