OPINION: Budget 2026 – the rich gets more, the poor get sores

Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 January 2026, 19:40 by Writer

by GHK Lall

If I were a rich man…
I’d build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen…
I’d fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese…
I see my wife…looking like a rich man’s wife…

Those lines cobbled together from Fiddler on the Roof announce to the world the dream of the poor man in Guyana (women, too). From a rich man’s perspective, the 2026 Budget adds more of those to the already rich, the superrich, of Guyana. Another big house, bigger ones, planned and done. Another sprawling plot of prime land snared and filled with snow leopards, hippos and exotic ornaments of the stinking rich. And why settle for one wife when several more is in keeping with the new wealth inside the new budget for rich people.

I let the 2026 Budget numbers speak for themselves. Best to think in billions. Hundreds of those succulent orbs of opulence, those that make possible a luscious life. Somebody has to build roads and bridges, all $196 billion worth of them. Isn’t that the lavish banquet that makes delectable, delirium-inducing feastings possible? Move over L’il Comrade, Mr. Small Guyana Man, with a hammer, a saw, and a shovel without a handle. FYI – the saw isn’t electric. It is contractor time, and what a time, baby! The contractor class used to number among the nouveau rich in Guyana. Now this already rich group has a budget (another one) that powers them more commandingly to the upper levels of Guyana’s established aristocracy. Like the old British one, the new Guyana doesn’t open its doors to wannabees. It’s a closed circle, an inner circle, a circle that looks out for one another in the best traditions of noble backscratching. The sophisticated phrase for that doesn’t exist in English. The Romans rescued with quid pro quo. Heavy donations facilitate sweet budget provisions. Thanks, Dr. Ashni, for considering the faithful, including them in budget bounties.

There’s every reason for the gold and diamond people to be happy. C’mon, fellow Guyanese, stop thinking small, as in a couple pennyweight and a one-ounce pork-knocker who lightning struck with a zigzag of luck. Think big: big budgetary concessions, big budgetary provisions, and the big people (miners) who again hit it big in the budget. The zero percent excise tax is a boon to big mining operators, and that $10 billion for interior roads continues the free-for-all, that revolving door. The PPP Govt build up the roads, the big miners and big transporters bruk dem up. Thus, the stage is set for more budget billions for interior roads next year. The big gold operators are part of the mining gentry, the landed aristocracy. What is there not to love about the 2026 Budget? Especially when some mining magnates also double as transport tycoons and road royalists and cuddled quarrymen. Recall what I said a paragraph back. It’s a closed circle of incestuous insiders. They are all related, they all enjoy relations, and they are all stinking rich. Score one for Dr. Ashni for being so thoughtful: the rich win again, prosper again.

The already rich, the grand cabal of haves, can’t complain. Poor Guyanese own and control that monopoly. The haves have every reason to celebrate. No new taxes. They get to collect VAT, but only they know how much of that treasure chest reaches Godfrey Statia’s cash registers. Then, of course, the accountants and auditors come into their own, with their slice of the money action. Recommendation for Dr. Singh: a tax on political donations and corruption billions. How about that, chief? But no new tax is a scam that aids the rich and blows away the poor. Debt is living death for them. From the great, big bag of US$7.7 billion in debt to the greater, bigger bag of US$10 billion in total debt. More money drained from the Oil Fund (during almost all of 2025) and more debt in the making, and one poor Guyanese segment gets $5,000 for this and another get $10,000 for something else. It explains why the superrich are hoisting their gold glasses encrusted with diamonds and toasting Ali, Jagdeo, and Singh. Thanks for looking out for number one. There will be remembering. There will be rewarding. The donations will keep coming; just block those calls that seek to make them public.

It is great to see Comrade Gail Texeira reappear and looking rosier than a genuinely rich princess. (Hope that doesn’t get into trouble, is taken accordingly). The grab bag for Guyana’s rich was overflowing. Education, $183.6B; health, $161.1B, and housing, $159.1B. Hundreds of billions for the usual suspects, great allocations if Guyanese only could get 80 cents on each dollar. Think of this: when 20 cents on each dollar in $500 billion from only those three sectors are rebooked (stolen) that’s one hundred billion dollars lost to corruption, something at which PPP Govts are incomparable partakers and masters. I trust that I didn’t provoke Cde Gail, another devout RC, and disturbed her day. It gets worse. Maybe her spectacles got clouded, but when Minister Texeira segued over to sparing a word for the little people in Guyana, she started speaking a new language. Instead of billions, she boiled down to millions. Instead of hundreds of billions, her gospel for the poor couldn’t get past multiples of ten. I call that rich broth for the already rich and low gravy for the impoverished, the challenged, and the disillusioned.

To bring this PPP gothic horror to a merciful end, what do poor fathers and mothers tell their empty-handed, glassy-eyed children? Stop thinking joining up at Robb Street (close to SN). Best to join the line at Duke Street and brace self to deal with Donald Trump. Imagine that: Ashni Singh’s budget for the rich makes colored Guyanese put Trump in front of him. There’s little left to be said of what could be more joyful for Guyana’s rich, as budgeted; what could be such a bellyful of pain, agony, for poor Guyanese.