Home Top Stories Pres Ali announces $200,000 one-off payment for every household among other multi-billion...
As part of his government’s commitment to putting more money into the hands of citizens, President Dr Irfaan Ali on Thursday announced a sleuth of measures for Guyanese across the country including a $200,000 cash grant for every household to cushion the burden of the current high cost of living.
The Head of State was at the time addressing, for the second time, the 12th Parliament, which just came out of its annual recess period.
During his more than three-hour marathon presentation, President Ali reflected on the initiatives put in place by the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration since taking office in 2020 to bring financial relief to Guyanese and in the same breath, announced the introduction of a new series of initiatives that are aimed at safeguarding the quality of life and securing disposable income for citizens.
According to the Guyanese Leader, the one-off $200,000 cash grant will see an injection of some $60 billion of disposable income into the Guyanese households countrywide. “We’ll begin this one-off cash grant payment to household instantaneously,” he added.
This announcement, while widely welcomed by the public, sparked some concerns over the qualification for the cash grant, especially for multiple families living at the same residence as well as for tenants, whose landlords often cash in on such payouts thus leaving them with nothing.
Qualification for cash grant
However, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo subsequently explained that the government is still working out what constitutes a “household” to benefit from the one-off cash grant. “We still have to work it through – the great detail, but we believe we can do it,” he declared at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.
In cases where multiple households are living in the same building, Jagdeo said that the distributors will utilise the same process used for the COVID cash grant, that is, allocate the grants to the primary household first, and then make provisions for the secondary households if proven to be legitimate.
Jagdeo further pointed out that while the census shows there are 264,000 heads of households in the country, the government knows this number of greater. “We believe the census did not capture everyone… So, this is where it gets tricky,” he stated.
According to the Vice President, the government will be utilising databases from Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) and Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) to determine who are legitimate heads of households.
Moreover, he made it clear that landlords with multiple buildings will not benefit from multiple collections, and that arrangements will be made for secondary households on the same property to benefit.
“We’ll clean up that list so if you have five metres (in your name), you’re not gonna get (for all five). But assuming I’m paying for five tenants now… (after) we go through the first list and GPL’s verified database, these five tenants are eligible to claim as separate households,” Jagdeo explained.
The Vice President further assured that while renters will also benefit, non-nationals living/renting here will not. In fact, he pointed out that the distribution exercise will require a strict process of verification.
For hinterland communities, he noted that the verification process is less complicated since those villages are smaller and the Toshaos are in a position to give advice on legitimate households.
Nevertheless, VP Jagdeo posited that while the government is confident that the economy can absorb this massive cash injection, the government intends to ensure every legitimate household benefits and that the distribution is done fairly without people trying to cheat the system.
“So, we’re working it to try to see as far as possible, how we can make it fair without people ripping off the system… I hope people don’t move into a place and say they’re gonna rent for a week [just to benefit from the grant]… It’s not an easy task when you’re dealing with large numbers of people and you have like about five per cent of them looking to cheat the system – deliberately set out to cheat. We’re not stary-eyed about this, you know, we know (about the fraudsters),” the Vice President stated.
Public sector minimum wage
Further, Ali revealed additional measures that his government will implement to increase the disposable income in Guyanese households.
“In securing purchasing power and disposable income of our people… I now wish to announce that by the end of 2025, no public sector employee will be working for less than $100,000 monthly. This will see the disposable income of these employees increasing by more than $1 billion. This is how we build prosperity; this is how we reduce disparity, and this is how we build equity in the system; real action, real work, real policies – all in the interest of our people,” he stressed.
According to Ali, this will be added to the increases for public servants that the PPP/C Administration has rolled out since 2020 including the special adjustments to the salaries of certain categories of teachers, public healthcare workers and members of the Disciplined Forces. Those measures had benefited over 18,000 public sector employees.
Only back in August 2024, the Education Ministry finalised a new multi-year agreement with the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) that will see the country’s educators in the public system receiving salary increases for the next three years at 10 per cent in 2024, eight per cent in 2025 and nine per cent in 2026. Additionally, adjustments were agreed to for several other allowances paid to teachers, including the remote area incentive and allowances paid to teachers with post-graduate qualifications.
For the Disciplined Forces, the Ali-led Government restored the one-month tax-free year-end bonuses, placing over $6 billion in the hands of the members of the various discipline services since 2020.
“We don’t demonstrate our love and commitment to people by noise. We demonstrate our commitment and love to people by real action, real policy, real intervention,” the Guyanese Leader asserted.
Healthcare vouchers
In keeping with the same theme of enhancing the lives of Guyanese, the President noted that his government has invested close to $500 billion to develop the country’s healthcare system by partnering with the best international healthcare providers and incentivising private investments in the healthcare sector.
“We are focusing heavily on primary healthcare to ensure early detection, early care, public health, education and preventative care. This is part of the public health system to promote a healthier population,” he stated.
Against this backdrop, the Head of State announced the introduction of a universal healthcare voucher to the tune of $10,000 per person in 2025. This, he explained, will “…help finance the cost of the basic menu of tests to establish baseline health data and to identify early warning signals so preventative action can be taken to avoid the onset of the main non-communicable disease.”
This universal healthcare voucher will benefit approximately 500,000 persons across Guyana and is an investment of some $5 billion that will go towards building a healthy, strong and resilient population.
Only earlier this year, the government rolled out, as part of Budget 2024, the distribution of vouchers to support eye tests for school children and pensioners along with financial support to purchase spectacles for those in need. In addition, women over the age of 21 can also benefit from a voucher to undergo a screening test for cervical cancer.
Tax relief for parents
Another hallmark of the Ali-led Administration is its interventions in the tax system to promote several policy objects including an income tax deductible in relation to the premiums paid by taxpayers for life and medical insurance.
To further increase the income tax threshold for categories of citizens, the Guyanese Leader on Thursday announced that next year, his government will be introducing a new income tax deductible for parents.
“Each child [will] entitle one of their parents to claim an additional deduction of $10,000 per month for the purpose of determining their chargeable income that is subjected to income tax… So, what this in effect mean, is that for every child, one of their parents will be entitled to an additional income tax threshold of $120,000,” the president noted.
It was further explained that “…if you have two children will take you to $140,000… $10,000 per child and two children is $20,000… Three children would entitle you to $30,000 per month. So, this initiative would see the tax deduction on your salary, improving your disposable income and expanding your non-tax income.”
NIS subvention
Moreover, having already granted an accumulated 75 per cent increase in the monthly pension over the past four years and increased the minimum pension at the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) earlier this year from $35,000 to $43,000 monthly, the PPP/C Government has injected several billion dollars into the NIS to assist the elderly population.
According to President Ali, based on the feedback from community outreaches across the country, the government found it necessary that it must and should do more.
“We recognize that a number of persons continue to face challenges accessing their benefits from the NIS. In order to address these, we have earmarked a sum of $10 billion as a one-off injection into the NIS to help address some of these challenges,” the Head of State noted.
This intervention, Ali added, would allow contributors who do not meet the requirement to benefit from the NIS pension, to now receive a cash payout from whatever limited contributions they would have made.
Reduction in electricity costs
In a further bid to ease the high cost of living, President Ali committed that Guyanese consumers will get significant relief in 2025 when the cost of electricity is slashed by half with the operationalisation of the 300-megawatt power plant from the Gas-to-Energy project – a key initiative as part of the government energy transition mix.
“We will be reducing by half, by 50 per cent, the cost of electricity for every consumer in Guyana. And this will be done long before the end of 2025,” he declared.
According to the Head of State, this investment will see Guyanese saving more than US$250 million.
“This is an injection of 250 million US dollars by the Government of Guyana that will positively impact disposal income by the reduction in the cost of electricity. That is more than $50 billion back in the pockets of the Guyanese people… This is where the revenue is going. This is where the investment is being made in the lives of people, in the comfort of people, in the disposable income. This is how prosperity is built by enhancing livelihood, improving infrastructure, giving better access to housing, healthcare, education, delivering higher quality services and empowering people and families,” he posited.
Incentives for poultry farmers
Notwithstanding these interventions, President Ali also spoke about advancements in the country’s agriculture sector to make it a centerpiece in the country’s non-oil economy. Focusing on poultry, he highlighted efforts to transform and modernise this area with innovative solutions like tunnel houses.
“Given the importance of the poultry meat sector in agriculture… we’ll be introducing in the next fiscal year, new rules that will allow for accelerated depreciation of capital investment by poultry farmers. This will reduce the effective cost of investment in the sector and incentivize ramped-up investment and increase production,” the Guyanese Leader noted.
He posited that the intention is to make Guyana a poultry meat-producing capital of the Caribbean. Consequently, it was also announced that the Government is examining the regions and sectors in the Income Tax (In Aid of Industry) Act as eligible for tax holidays, to possibly expand these to include several specific geographic areas earmarked to be special economic development zones.
Despite his major announcements of these and other initiatives on Thursday, the Head of State assured that there will be more such relief measures for Guyanese in the 2025 Budget. (G-8)