Thinking…

… rich

Some folks are clearly stuck in the era when we used to be accused of going around the world with a begging bowl!! Looking at our Government’s borrowing has raised the alarm bell. I suggest the marshals are already approaching the seawall to garnish our country!! The fact of the matter is a country’s debt can’t be judged just by counting the zeros – you gotta examine its income, repayment obligations and what the borrowing actually builds!!
Sure, our debt’s growing – public and publicly guaranteed debt was US$8.57 billion by June, up from US$7.74 billion at the end of 2025. While that deserves scrutiny, it doesn’t, by itself, establish that we’re borrowing beyond our means – which is increasing!! We gotta look at the repayment burden, where debt service absorbed 5.5 per cent of Government revenue in 2025, versus 8.5 per cent in 2020!! Similarly, overall debt was 28.6 per cent of GDP – waay below the 47.4 per cent in 2020!!
What’s game-changing is the improvement in our oil entitlement, with Pressie announcing in August that we’re now entitled to 39.8 per cent of Stabroek crude production – following Exxon’s consortium’s recovery of accumulated investment costs!! That substantially strengthens our country’s revenue prospects and our capacity to repay development loans!! So, critics need to update their arithmetic – a debt burden assessed against yesterday’s revenues can give a misleading picture of tomorrow’s repayment capacity!!
So why borrow when oil money’s flowing? Well, because infrastructure demands large upfront payments – while its benefits stretch over decades!! Affordable loans – and THAT’s the key – can allow us to complete essential investments sooner while retaining financial reserves!! Cause borrowing carries interest costs and preserving savings makes sense when the financing terms, project benefits and value of maintaining a buffer justify it – as it does!!
After all, there’s a cost to waiting – farmers lose produce on miserable roads; businesses spend money generating their own electricity, and flooding destroys household savings!! Those losses don’t appear in the critics’ debt calculations, but Guyanese pay them all the same!! ‘ Cause the strongest defence of borrowing is therefore the productive economy it can create – reliable power, transport, drainage, education and healthcare can make businesses more competitive and citizens more capable. Oil revenues offer an opportunity to finance that transformation before petroleum income eventually peters out!!
Now all of this doesn’t mean that the Government doesn’t have to be careful – it always should be!! But we gotta accept that we have stronger grounds for development borrowing than we had before oil!! The real debate, then, should be over affordability, execution and results – and there have been some valid criticisms here like with the Wales GtE project!! Let the critics examine those matters closely!!
But shouting “debt” whenever a bridge or hospital is financed contributes precious little to building our country!!

…about Ministerial ineptitude
They say “moon does run till daylight, ketch am”, don’t they?? Well, it’s revealed that the Sanctimonious Gangster’s disastrous appointment of Minister of Agriculture ran deeper than we’d learnt!! And that’s saying quite a lot for a fellow who didn’t know the difference between a cane field and a rice field!! All he knew – from books – that they were members of the grass family!! – yet was put in a position to decide their fates!!
And decide he did, didn’t he?? One industry was almost shut down – throwing thousands of workers into the bread lines – while the other saw its markets shrink and prices plunge!! But that pales in comparison to the revelation that the fella single-handedly torpedoed our Gilbakka trade to the US – leaving hundreds of thousands of our compatriots in New York suffering from withdrawal symptoms that are still manifesting themselves!!
Seems the deskbound wonder received a questionnaire from the USDA about our Gilbakka processing – and faked the answers!!
A failure in paperwork too!!

…about Chinese funding
It’s been revealed that the Chinese 76-year-old killer of the six-year-old kid owed US$3M to the kid’s parents. That’s GY$660 Million!! Can you imagine the turnover these Chinese restaurants are having??
Guyanese eating out!!