Dear Editor,
The return of Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo’s press conferences has, ironically, served to highlight a significant governance deficit within the current administration. His recent declaration on November 6th, 2025 — that ministries and agencies must now justify expenditures through clear programmes and objectives — would be commendable if it were not so profoundly disconnected from his government’s own practices. This lofty rhetoric collapses under the weight of a glaring contradiction: the allocation of over $30 billion in taxpayer funds to GuySuCo without any transparent, programme-based justification over a two year period (2024-2025).
The Vice President’s call for accountability is undermined by a top-down management style where strategic direction appears to reside solely with him and President Irfaan Ali, reducing ministers and permanent secretaries to glorified clerks in the implementation of opaque instructions. This creates a system where official policy and actual practice are often at odds, leading to confusion and inefficiency. The demand for expenditure justification rings hollow and empty when the decision-making process itself seems to lack transparency. The most egregious example of this disconnect is the massive financial lifeline extended to GuySuCo. Contrary to loose political talk, the figures are concrete and alarming. According to the official 2024 Auditor General’s Report, GuySuCo received:
$10.289 billion from the Ministry of Finance for current expenditures.
$5.219 billion for capital expenditures.
Total 2024 Transfer: $15.508 billion from the people of Guyana.
This has been followed by a further transfer of approximately $15 billion in 2025. This brings the two-year total to over $30 billion. This is an unprecedented level of funding for a perpetually loss-making entity. Does Mr. Jagdeo knows what $30 billion can do for the poor people of Guyana; it can build close to 4,000 homes for those without proper housing and give it to them for free. Every cane cutter in Berbice can be given a free house with this money rather than paying contractors on slimy deals. The facts are this PPP was never about the poor and the working class; they were all about their contractor friends and family.
The fundamental question, which the media has regrettably failed to press the Vice President on, is: What is the specific, measurable programme and set of objectives that justified this $30 billion expenditure? How does subsidizing an industry that directly employs less than 7,000 people, at a cost of over $4 million per worker per year, “respond to a particular need of the people”? Where are the Key Performance Indicators, the benchmarks for profitability, or the timeline for achieving sustainability? This is not programme-based budgeting; it is the very definition of the old, discredited model of blank-check, incremental bailouts that Mr. Jagdeo publicly claims to be moving away from.
The government cannot plausibly enforce a new standard of accountability on smaller agencies while exempting its own largest subsidies from the same rigorous scrutiny. This selective application of principles suggests the new directive is a public relations exercise, designed to create an illusion of fiscal discipline. There-fore, we must insist that the government lead by example. Before demanding justifications from others, the Vice President must publicly present the detailed programmatic justification for the $30 billion GuySuCo transfer. He must detail the strategic plan, the KPIs for success, and the exit strategy from public support.
Until he does so, his words on fiscal responsibility will remain an insult to the intelligence of the Guyanese people and a testament to a government that says one thing while doing the exact opposite. I call on the media and the WIN Member of Parliament Mr. Vishnu Panday to do their work and expose what is happening in the agriculture sector.