Is Guyana Surrendering Its Sovereignty by Installment?

 

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Is Guyana Surrendering Its Sovereignty by Installment?

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OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

India, with its population, military weight, industrial base and geopolitical importance, was affronted when Washington publicly suggested that its foreign minister was expected to travel to Mumbai to meet Rubio. The diplomatic optics mattered because they suggested an unequal relationship: Washington summons, India accommodates.

Guyana should study that moment carefully.

For years, this country has watched foreign officials, foreign companies and foreign-backed institutions become unusually prominent in defining what is presented as Guyana’s development agenda. The concern is not that Guyana should reject cooperation with the United States or any other partner. Guyana needs trade, technology, investment, markets and international alliances. But cooperation becomes dependency when the foreign partner appears to set priorities, select projects, announce commitments, and publicly lead a national agenda before Guyanese have received full disclosure from their own government.

That distinction is no longer academic. It is at the center of the country’s political economy.

The UN Meeting That Raises Questions

The meeting between President Irfaan Ali and John Jovanovic, chairman and president of the United States Export-Import Bank, on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York deserves far more public scrutiny than it has received. Following those discussions, six major Guyanese initiatives were publicly identified: completion of Gas-to-Energy Phase One, Gas-to-Energy Phase Two, a Berbice deep-water port, the Amaila Falls hydropower project, expansion of Lethem Airport, and an affordable-housing construction program involving US companies.

These are not marginal undertakings. They touch the electricity system, national energy policy, port infrastructure, hinterland connectivity, housing, industrialization, public debt and the country’s long-term development model. In effect, they constitute a substantial portion of what has been described as Guyana’s transformational agenda.

The public must therefore ask a plain question: how did such an extensive portfolio of strategic projects come to be discussed, selected and publicly advanced during a meeting on the sidelines of a major international event?

A meeting at the United Nations may be convenient for diplomacy. It is not, however, a substitute for a transparent national planning process. It cannot replace feasibility studies, parliamentary disclosure, competitive procurement, public consultation, debt-sustainability analysis, environmental review, independent technical evaluation, and a clear explanation of the alternatives considered.

When an external financier emerges from a short high-level encounter describing a broad slate of projects in which it is prepared to participate, citizens are entitled to wonder whether the decisions were already substantially made. Was the New York meeting principally an occasion to formalise an arrangement that had been negotiated elsewhere? If so, when did those negotiations begin, who participated, what undertakings were made, and what conditions were attached?

Finance Is Not Free

US EXIM is not a charitable institution. It is the export-credit agency of the United States government, created to facilitate American exports, American companies and American jobs. Its own previous announcement of the approximately US$527 million financing for Guyana’s Gas-to-Energy project explicitly said that the transaction would support US jobs and more than a dozen US companies.

That is not inherently improper. Every lending country and export-credit agency seeks advantages for its own businesses. Guyana would be naïve to expect otherwise. But that reality must be spoken plainly: American financing is normally structured to advance American commercial interests alongside Guyana’s stated development objectives.

The question for Guyana is not whether it should accept external financing. The question is whether the financing is being assessed on Guyana’s terms.

What are the interest rates, repayment conditions, grace periods, sovereign guarantees and currency risks? Which American companies are positioned to benefit? What local-content commitments are binding rather than promotional? Are Guyanese contractors, professionals and suppliers genuinely equipped to participate? What happens if projects overrun their budgets or fail to produce their projected returns? What independent studies demonstrate that each project is the best available use of public borrowing capacity?

Those questions become even more important when the same foreign lender is being invited into energy, ports, housing, security and transport infrastructure. A country can wake up one day and discover that a large share of its strategic assets are tied, directly or indirectly, to the preferences and suppliers of one foreign power.

That is not diversification. That is concentration of influence.

From Diplomacy to Technocratic Overreach

The matter is more troubling because it goes beyond conventional diplomacy. A foreign ambassador making policy pronouncements is one thing; a foreign development-bank technocrat appearing to identify, prioritize and publicly champion a suite of national projects is another.

Jovanovic’s remarks and the government’s own reports made clear that US EXIM was looking beyond the second Gas-to-Energy project to the deep-water port, affordable housing and other national priorities. The government also listed Amaila Falls and the Lethem Airport project among the initiatives discussed.

Again, there is nothing wrong with a lender expressing interest. The problem begins when interest is treated as direction; when access to foreign credit is treated as a substitute for independent national planning; and when the political leadership appears prepared to align itself with every initiative a powerful external institution is willing to finance.

A lender’s preferred project list is not a national development plan.

Nor should Guyana mistake the availability of money for proof that a project is sound. International financiers do not make decisions solely because a proposal will transform the lives of Guyanese. They consider repayment prospects, political relationships, export opportunities, supply-chain advantages, strategic influence and the commercial prospects of their own firms.

Guyana must do the same: calculate its own interests first.

The Oil Connection

This question cannot be separated from oil. Guyana is now one of the world’s fastest-growing oil producers, and the dominant oil operator is ExxonMobil, an American multinational. US EXIM’s earlier financing for the Gas-to-Energy project was linked to a project structure involving Texas-based Lindsayca, Puerto Rico-based CH4 Systems and services provided by ExxonMobil.

That does not prove wrongdoing. It does, however, underscore why Guyana must build stronger safeguards around public decisions. When oil production, gas supply, power generation, US export-credit financing, US contractors and US geopolitical interests all converge, Guyana must be especially vigilant that its public interest is not quietly subordinated to a single external ecosystem.

A country cannot declare itself sovereign while allowing its central development choices to be shaped principally by the commercial orbit of the dominant foreign oil company and the government of that company’s home state.

Guyana must not become a place where the existence of a US company is treated as sufficient reason to accept US policy preferences, US financing structures and US corporate priorities without rigorous challenge. ExxonMobil is a private corporation. It is not Guyana’s development ministry, its environmental regulator, its treasury, its Parliament or its electorate.

Democracy Cannot Mean Dependency

Washington frequently presents itself as a guardian of democracy, transparency, rule of law and sovereignty. Those principles should be welcomed. But they lose moral force when powerful countries practice them selectively.

There is a profound contradiction when a major power lectures smaller states about democratic governance while using its commercial, financial and diplomatic reach to steer their development choices. Sovereignty is not only threatened by military force, authoritarian neighbors or territorial claims. It can also be weakened through financial dependence, tied lending, corporate leverage, elite accommodation and decision-making that takes place beyond meaningful public scrutiny.

Democracy is not strengthened because foreign money is available. Democracy is strengthened when a country’s citizens and institutions can understand, debate and influence decisions about their national assets, debt obligations, environment and future.

Guyana has no reason to apologize for demanding that standard.

The Government must stop presenting foreign support as though it is automatically a national triumph. Financing is neither a gift nor an endorsement of competence. It is a transaction. Guyana has a duty to determine whether the transaction serves Guyanese first, and whether it preserves room for the country to make independent decisions later.

Questions the Government Owes

Before Guyana moves further into this expanding US EXIM relationship, the Government should make a comprehensive statement to Parliament and the public addressing the following:

♦ When did discussions on the six identified projects begin, and which Guyanese officials, advisers and agencies participated?

♦ Were the projects selected through Guyana’s national planning and public-investment systems, or were they substantially identified through discussions with US EXIM and US companies?

♦ What specific financing has been approved, what remains only exploratory, and what terms have been proposed for each project?

♦ What debt exposure, sovereign guarantees, procurement conditions and US-content requirements would Guyana assume?

♦ Will each project undergo independent feasibility, environmental, social and value-for-money assessments before any commitment is made?

♦ What alternative financiers, technologies, contractors and project models were evaluated?

♦ Why are projects of such scale being announced around side meetings at the UN rather than first being fully disclosed through Guyana’s constitutional institutions?

♦ What binding requirements will ensure that Guyanese workers, firms, communities and taxpayers receive measurable benefits?

These are not anti-American questions. They are pro-Guyana questions.

Partnership, Not Submission

Guyana should pursue constructive relations with the United States, China, India, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and every country willing to engage on fair terms. It should welcome foreign capital, but never confuse access to foreign capital with the surrender of national judgment.

The country should neither pick fights for theatrical purposes nor bow for approval. It should negotiate firmly, diversify its partnerships, strengthen its domestic technical capacity, protect procurement integrity, and ensure that its Parliament and people are not spectators to decisions that will bind them for decades.

The lesson from India is clear. Diplomatic status is not measured only by speeches about partnership. It is revealed in the details: who sets the meeting, who controls the agenda, who makes the announcement, who selects the projects and whose interests are ultimately served.

Guyana cannot allow its development agenda to be written in Washington, negotiated in New York, announced by foreign officials and merely implemented at home.

A sovereign Guyana must insist on something better: Guyanese priorities, Guyanese scrutiny, Guyanese institutions and Guyanese control over Guyana’s future.