Unfulfilled Promises and Economic Realities: The Truth Behind Guyana’s Oil Boom

Please listen to this ex president, now Vice President in charge of Guyana’s oil boom collecting one and a half billion a year currently when he should have been collecting 5 and 6 billion had he renegotiated that oil deal he promised to do when sitting as opposition Leader. Kaiteur News Glen Lall says we should stop working. We must drink champagne and scotch on our verandas and the government must give us oil money. We all rich and for all of those who’ve been saying oh, we’re flush with oil money now that is the up news excuse. We didn’t do, we couldn’t do more so we need because the Pvp has oil money. Now never mind oil resources are just less than 30% of the budget. So let’s do some mathematics today so that people can understand how much money we really have. So you know in the budget we have 300 billion this year from oil money, about 1.5 billion US dollars. If you divide that by 850,000 and then divide that by 12, you’ll come up to a monthly number of 29,000 Guyana dollars. So if we stop building roads, we stop building schools, we stop building health centers, we stop increasing pensioners money, we take away the children’s grant, we stop doing everything else and we give every Guyanese 100% of all the money in the budget this year, it works out to 29,000 Ghana dollars per month. The 850,000 of us will get 29,000 month which is $150 about that. So that makes us rich now we can stop working with $150 a month we’re rich. And remember we’re not doing anything else. We’re just taking all the oil money and we are giving it out to everybody that they don’t understand magnitude. So when they see all these things happening, they think that oh, we’re flush with oil money but let them do the mathematics. So if you imagine you get now as a guy and he’s 29,000 a month, you’re not getting any road, forget the power plant, new power plant and cheaper electricity. Forget everything else, no infrastructure, let the sea defenses fall apart or anything everything else. Let the roads get pothole, let the roads remain narrow. Let there, we don’t have nothing on the healthcare site but we all get 29,000 Ghana dollars more per month. That will make us wealthy and all of the money will come to us and they’ll be happy. That’s what they want. I feel very sad for this country with what this man is doing to it. Had he renegotiated that 2% royalty rate, he would have never had to tell us to do the maths with him. Every home would have been collecting 3, 400,000 a month by now apart from renegotiation. Had he ring fenced those oil projects, every home today would have already been collecting another set of three $400,000 a month. Had he demanded 20% taxes on those oil projects, he keeps On approving, had he kept Exxon charges on their investments out there and properly audited Exxon books and those contract costs among other things, we didn’t have to do any maths with this expresident or complaining about funding for roads, schools and hospitals out of World Bank and IMF loans. We would have been cocking up befoot on every veranda, sipping whisky and drinking champagne while watching how the Americans, British, French, Chinese and Canadians working for us, building a Dubai in Guyana with our own oil money. Sadly, that is not the case. Guyanese are left lining up every year end to collect a small pittance and will get nothing more than a pat on their back for your finger come 2025.