Dear Editor,
In 2025, Guyana stands in a unique position: no country in the world produces more oil per person than we do. This should have translated into lower living costs, rising incomes, and broad-based prosperity. Instead, Guyanese have endured five consecutive years of food price increases, with more than half of the nation now struggling to meet basic needs.
The common explanation offered is corruption. Whether one accepts that argument or not, the uncomfortable truth is this: Guyana’s oil revenues are large enough that even poor and corrupt governance should not result in widespread hardship. Yet hardship persists. So the real question is—why?
A November 2024 report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), “Ten Findings about Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean” (Chang et al.), estimates Guyana’s poverty rate at 58%. This places us alarmingly close to poorly managed countries such as Venezuela (71%) and Honduras (60%). By any reasonable comparison, Guyana’s trajectory should resemble countries like Norway, not struggling economies in crisis.
How can a country with abundant oil, land, water, and minerals find itself in a situation where so many citizens cannot afford food?
The answer lies in how oil revenues are being used. Oil income is not reaching all layers of society, particularly the bottom 10–20 percent. Outside of one-off cash grants or short-term relief, there is no sustained programme for economic empowerment in distressed communities such as Tiger Bay and others across the country.
Instead, oil revenues are being channeled primarily into large-scale infrastructure projects, many of which suffer from cost overruns, questionable quality, and limited economic spillover. Projects such as major highways and roads dominate public spending, while critical national priorities—modern ports, affordable electricity, more efficient food systems, and industrial development—remain underdeveloped.
Even more concerning is the lack of serious economic diversification. Oil wealth should be used as a tool to build lasting industries, not as a substitute for them. Guyana has yet to make meaningful investments in:
● value-added agriculture,
● agro-processing and animal feed production,
● downstream mineral processing including an oil refinery,
● light manufacturing,
● pharmaceuticals,
● natural gas monetization projects,
● or the digital and knowledge economy.
This concern is reinforced by research from Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, which measures how productive and diversified economies are. Guyana ranks in the bottom 10 percent globally, with an export base that is narrow, vulnerable, and overwhelmingly dependent on a single commodity.
In 2024, over 90% of Guyana’s exports came from oil alone.
History shows that when one industry becomes too dominant, it can:
● inflate food prices,
● weaken other productive sectors,
● increase inequality,
● and expose the country to adverse economic shocks.
This phenomenon is well known globally. The warning signs are now visible in Guyana.
Oil should be a bridge to prosperity—not a trap. Without diversification, enhanced productivity, and greater inclusion, oil wealth risks enriching balance sheets of the rich while bankrupting the poor in Guyana.
Because of space constraints of the newspapers, the remainder of this discussion will be continued another day.