Jagdeo tempers ‘oil money’ expectations

Last Updated on Monday, 11 March 2024, 7:33 by Denis Chabrol

Amid persistent calls by sections of Guyanese for government to use some of the oil earnings to pay increased wages and salaries, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Sunday sought to calm expectations that the country has a huge chunk of money pouring into the economy to do so.

“How are we going to distribute what we don’t have?,” he told a governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) commemorative rally for  Founder-Leader and Executive President, Cheddi Jagan who died in 1997.

He reiterated that less than 30 percent of the GY$1.1 trillion national budget was funded by oil revenues in 2023. “The oil and gas money alone, when you pay wages and salaries and pension, that is over 50 percent of all the oil money that we received so we’re not flush with oil money,” he said.

Bank of Guyana records sh0w that in 2023 the country earned US$1.3 million from its entitled lifts from the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessels, Liza Destiny and Liza Unity, plus more than US$52 million in royalties.

Mr Jagdeo, a former Finance Minister, said the remainder of the budget was being financed from “elsewhere.”

Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton, Guyana Teachers Union, Guyana Public Service Union, Guyana Trades Union Congress and to a lesser extent the Federation of Independent Trades Unions of Guyana have been clamouring for increased wages and salaries.

Mr Norton had in the past recommended that the income tax threshold be increased to GY$150,000 per month and a cost of living allowance. More recently he has asked government to redirect GY$20 billion from infrastructure and several other areas “towards improving lives without imposing undue strain on budget”.

However, the Vice President accused his critics of raising expectations about the oil revenues. “It’s a political thing. They want to say the government not giving you the oil and gas money or the oil and gas money is funding everything,” he said.