US Ambassador on taxes

Oct 18, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – “It’s wonderful to hear all of these tax incentives and other support mechanisms being put in place for local businesses but the international companies are still struggling a little bit with this. Hopefully, we’ll be able to overcome these challenges together.” It is surprising that it took so long for the US Ambassador to Guyana, Nicole Theriot, to speak that publicly. At the heart of her statement is that US companies expect more, the US government expects more, and that the Guyana Government should be more generous with its tax packages. We put our own points before Ambassador Theriot, hoping that she finds them worthy of consideration.

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Perhaps, if US oil giant, ExxonMobil, paid a fair and reasonable share of taxes on its oil operations and income, then the Guyana Government would have the room, would have a cushion that permits some tax concessions to other US investors weighing their options about investing in Guyana. When ExxonMobil was so canny, so visionary, to insert zero taxes in its handcrafted 2016 Production Sharing Agreement with Guyana, that had two fallouts which have considerable meaning now. Zero taxes, and nowhere near to zero taxes, can no longer be the baseline, against which other potential investors measure their own tax expectations.