Pres. Ali commits to making details of oil currency spending public
By Shikema Dey
President Irfaan Ali.
Kaieteur News – President Irfaan Ali in his pre-wedding speech to the National Assembly is committed to publishing details of all revenue and expenditure of the Guyana oil sector in the Official Gazette.
This, he said, will allow ordinary Guyanese citizens to track the transactions to hold the government better accountable for every cent earned from the industry and for every cent spent.
President Ali passed that legislation will be introduced to fulfill that mandate to make the Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance and the Finance Secretary responsible for publishing the details.
And if not, they would be “severely punished by law.”
“Revenue from the sector, like every other sector, is people’s money; they have a right to know how much money is earned, how much is spent and what is spent, ”he said.
The Head of State also revealed that he has explicitly stated to his government that “transparency and accountability” are the most fundamental principles on which he expects to conduct himself.
“We are custodians of the people’s assets,” said the President, “and we will hold them to account for everything we do.”
In addition, the President said that in order to hold oil companies operating in the Stabroek Block accountable, and to check productivity and other spending, the government is in the process of building exploration capacity.
To date, Guyana has only 10 officers from the Petroleum Revenue Department of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) involved in examining costs borne by the oil sector, even as billions in bills continue to pile up.
The 2019 Auditor General’s report outlined that since the initial establishment of the unit back in September 2019, it boasts 15 officers but identified that only 10 were directly involved in carrying out the audits.
It was explained that GRA employed a strategy of training officers from various audit functions to build a repository of the necessary skills and competencies that would be used and influenced by industry requirements.
It was reported that those audit officers had benefited from multiple training sessions conducted by the Technical Assistance Office and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to build capacity to ‘Administer domestic taxes in the Oil and Gas Sector’ and ‘carry out Cost Recovery Audits’ from March 2017 to July 2019.
Such a small team may not be enough as Guyana has billions in oil-related expenses to be explored by partners, affiliates and subcontractors ExxonMobil and Stabroek Block.