Guyana’s Oil Wealth Is Being Borrowed Away: The Dangerous Debt Legacy of Ali and Ashni Singh

Guyana’s Oil Wealth Is Being Borrowed Away: The Dangerous Debt Legacy of Ali and Ashni Singh

OPINION BY: Charles Sugrim October 2026

The Overall Deficit After Grants in the Guyanese public finance has deteriorated dramatically over the last 12 months under the watch of Dr. Ashni Singh. It declined from negative $35 billion in the first half of 2025 to negative $105 billion in the first half of 2026. No government can credibly present this as an achievement. It is driven almost entirely by runaway public expenditure, which rose by $62 billion year-on-year, while revenues shrunk by nearly $4 billion. Spending more while earning less is not a recipe for national development; it is a national disaster.  

These figures reveal that the PPP-C administration under President Irfaan Ali is pursuing a markedly more expansionary fiscal policy, financed through borrowing. Borrowing in Guyana tripled between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. Let me repeat that: borrowing tripled in a single year and the figures are all there in their own Ministry of Finance MID-YEAR REPORT 2026.

Net external borrowing surged from $19 billion to $71 billion, while net borrowing from the local banking sector rose from $16 billion to $35 billion, apparently to absorb excess liquidity being paid out to their favored friends and families in the contracting class. The administration is borrowing from foreign and domestic lenders alike, with the evident purpose of financing a contracting class on projects that are not bringing relief to the people.

 Is this Irfaan Ali’s vision of productive national development and shared prosperity for the people of Guyana?

Unless the non-oil economy grows consistently and persistently faster than this debt accumulation, Guyana risks seeing its oil wealth (currently held in the Natural Resource Fund), pledged away to banks and other creditors.

This raises immediate and serious concerns about debt sustainability and future interest burdens, something which Mr. Christopher Ram continues to highlight for the nation. Interest payments already rose by $5 billion between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. At this pace, annual interest payments are projected to exceed $20 billion by year-end, a snowballing obligation that consumes ever more fiscal space and leaves less for the Guyanese people. That is money flowing to lenders, not to citizens.

Dr. Ashni Singh is failing this nation as Minister of Finance by permitting his political bosses to raid the treasury without issuing the necessary fiscal advisories. This is not how a solid foundation is built for a nation. This not how generational wealth is acquired.

Over the past three years, these reckless policies have directly fueled inflation and a runaway cost of living crisis, while the government deflects blame onto the Gulf war and Ukraine war rather than leveling with the people on their poor public financial policies.

The Guyanese people should take nothing this administration says at face value. In real terms, they will be poorer next year than they were last year. Guyana’s most talented professionals already recognize this, which is precisely why so many young, skilled citizens continue to seek opportunities in better-managed democracies abroad.

Our future is bleak. The PPP-C administration continues to mislead the uninformed public about the true reality of our country’s finances.

Future administrations will inherit a crushing public debt burden—one that taxpayers will be forced to service for decades. This reckless borrowing does not merely mortgage future revenues; it threatens to strip citizens of essential public services as ever-larger portions of the national budget are diverted to banks and creditors.

Infrastructure is not progress when it is built on unsustainable debt, hidden obligations, and the sacrifice of Guyana’s future fiscal independence.