One Question Wearing Three Hats

 

Commentary

A GlobeSpan 24×7 panel explored Guyana’s new development bank, supplementary budget, and current events, repeatedly asking: what kinds of institutions is Guyana building with its new wealth?

By Guyana Business Journal · June 18, 2026

A wide-ranging GlobeSpan 24×7 panel on Wednesday evening moved across three ostensibly separate subjects — a new development bank, a mid-year supplementary budget, and a contested child-protection bill — and arrived, repeatedly, at a single underlying question. As Dr. Terrence Blackman framed it early in the broadcast, the development bank, the supplementary budget, and the current events surrounding them are “one question wearing three hats”: what kinds of institutions is Guyana building with its new wealth?

The Kiskadee Watch

The evening opened on a hopeful note unrelated to the main agenda. GHK Lall offered an overview of Kiskadee Watch, the new independent digital news platform launched the previous Sunday to help fill the gap left by Stabroek News’s March closure. Built around former Stabroek editor-in-chief Anand Persaud and a group of contributors, the venture is subscription-based and currently daily and digital, with a Sunday print edition envisioned within the next quarter. Lall, who described himself as a contributor, stressed the platform’s commitment to editorial independence and non-partisan, “pro-Guyana” coverage — a value that would echo through the rest of the night.

The Development Bank

Host Nohar Singh introduced the Development Bank as a GY$20 billion first-year initiative (roughly US$100 million, with a further tranche to follow), offering micro-credit of up to GY$3 million at zero interest and little or no collateral to small businesses, young people, women, and persons with disabilities, with consortium loans of up to GY$10 million available where commercial banks partner with the institution.

The three panelists staked out distinct positions that, taken together, mapped the full terrain of the debate. Leyland Roopnarine opened with the sharpest skepticism, questioning whether any government — of either major party — has the record to run a financial institution well, and arguing that such lending belongs in private hands under independent oversight. Drawing on his experience in the United States housing market, he pointed to the private status of major American mortgage institutions as the source of their discipline. His central worry was capture: that, in the absence of genuine independence, the bank’s funds would flow along lines of political favor rather than merit. His constructive proposals were practical and well received — decentralize the bank with offices across the regions rather than concentrating access in Georgetown, since many would-be borrowers hold land but lack capital and machinery; and, alternatively, channel the funds through the small-business units of several existing commercial banks that already possess the lending expertise a new institution would have to build from scratch.

Blackman accepted much of the skepticism while resisting the conclusion. The financial-inclusion goal, he said, deserves unequivocal support given a widely cited poverty rate of 58 percent: “I would be hypocritical if I stood here and said I do not support that goal.” The decisive issue, in his account, is design rather than intention. “A development bank’s value is not in the capital it holds. It is in how you govern it,” he said. “Capital without the structure is not a bank. It is a disbursement window.” He set out four conditions for getting it right: a governance architecture insulated from political override and durable across electoral cycles, so that the loan book never becomes a patronage instrument; annual public reporting with ethnically disaggregated outcomes, so the institution can be honestly evaluated; lending confined to TIN- and NIS-compliant registered businesses, with a deliberate strategy to pull informal operators into the visible, taxable economy; and clarity about how the bank sits alongside the existing Small Business Bureau and the credit programs already offered by Republic Bank and GBTI. He also pushed back on the premise that the state has no proper role in capital markets, noting that governments everywhere — including the United States, through defense procurement, the GI Bill, and federal science funding — shape economic life. “The question is not whether government should be involved,” he said. “It is whether it is a positive force or a self-serving one.”

Lall occupied a middle position: full-throated support for the concept, paired with a specific structural objection. He commended the zero-interest, zero-collateral design as a genuine opening for ordinary citizens, but reported that the draft bill vests appointment of all directors, the chairman, and the deputy chairman in the Minister of Finance. That, he argued, validates the skepticism and undercuts any claim of independence. He drew a pointed parallel to the Natural Resource Fund, where, in his telling, billions in withdrawals have been accounted for to the public largely through the bare statutory phrase “national development priorities.” Having asked in his Sunday column whether the bank might prove “a bank robbery in waiting,” he nonetheless urged citizens to engage it in good faith: to apply honestly, seek help with their business plans, repay what they borrow, and test the system on its merits. The audience pressed the same seams. One viewer asked whether a family running two businesses might apply for GY$3 million each — a question Blackman’s call for clear definitions had anticipated. Another flatly called the bank a slush fund. A recurring theme in the comments, voiced by Dr. Karen Ann Abrams, was unease about any program operating without genuine independence and control.

GBJ Data Note: The financial-inclusion goal of the Development Bank is critical given Guyana’s widely cited poverty rate of 58%.

A development bank’s value is not in the capital it holds. It is in how you govern it. Capital without the structure is not a bank. It is a disbursement window.

The Supplementary Budget

Turning to fiscal policy, the panel examined the GY$54.889 billion supplementary tabled roughly four months after the GY$1.558 trillion national budget was approved — a sum that, once passed, would lift the year’s spending to about GY$1.61 trillion, approaching US$8 billion. The largest items include GY$19.1 billion for the Wales gas-to-energy project (on top of some GY$10 billion already budgeted), GY$17 billion for housing, and roughly GY$8 billion each for public works and agriculture, the latter including a further GY$3 billion for the state sugar corporation.

Blackman urged the panel to keep both proportion and principle in view. At three to four per cent of the budget, he said, the supplementary is arithmetically modest; the real concern is institutional. “If we normalize supplementaries, the annual budget becomes just a floor,” — and the budget is meant to be the instrument through which the legislature scrutinizes and prioritizes spending. The more useful question, he argued, is value for money: “We are talking about US$8 billion now. Do we see US$8 billion of value for Guyana in that spend?” He flagged the gas-to-energy top-up and the recurring sugar subsidy as the items most deserving of that test, and called for the conversation to rise above tit-for-tat — including voices within the governing party, not only the opposition. In a related intervention prompted by viewer comments about foreign competition, he warned that without deliberately capitalizing its own entrepreneurs, Guyana would cede its commercial space to better-supported foreign firms: “If we cannot find the trust across our own internal bridges, the stranger will come and take the house.”

Lall pressed the pattern rather than the single instance. Reciting supplementary requests year by year since 2021, he argued they now total close to half a trillion Guyana dollars, with some arriving only weeks into a fiscal year. The repeated justification — “accelerated work program” — prompted his central question: where was the planning, the baselines, the metrics, the year before? He reserved particular concern for the gas-to-energy project, which he supports in principle as a route to cheaper, more reliable power, but on which he said he has lost confidence; he placed the disputed contract award at about US$97 million and warned that the project may yet require substantially more. Supplementaries of “such monotonous regularity,” he argued, risk becoming a mechanism for replenishing discretionary spending rather than meeting genuine contingencies, and the government’s feet should be held to the fire.

Roopnarine was the most categorical, invoking George Orwell’s discussion of the political uses of euphemism to characterize the official language surrounding the project. He traced the gas-to-energy cost from an early estimate of several hundred million US dollars to a figure now exceeding two billion, argued that the project has never been properly debated in Parliament, and questioned whether the supplementary is in substance a subsidy to a troubled undertaking. He pointed to Norway’s renewable-energy mix as an alternative worth weighing, and his remarks ranged into broader complaints about delayed flagship projects. (The host repeatedly read GlobeSpan’s standing disclaimer and explicitly cautioned against unverified comments concerning private individuals not present to respond.)

Host Nohar Singh contributed his own back-of-the-envelope analysis, estimating a total project cost in the region of US$2.4–2.5 billion and suggesting that, once the pipeline’s economic life and realistic operating capacity are factored in, delivered electricity could land well above fifteen US cents per kilowatt-hour — short of the competitiveness the project promises. He called for a dedicated future program, ideally with chartered accountant Christopher Ram, to fully dissect the numbers.

GBJ Data Note: The GY$54.889 billion supplementary budget, if passed, would increase Guyana’s total spending for the year to approximately US$8 billion.

If we normalize supplementaries, the annual budget becomes just a floor, and the budget is meant to be the instrument through which the legislature scrutinizes and prioritizes spending.

Current Events: The Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Bill and Security

The lightning round opened on the Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Bill, after public backlash prompted the President to send the legislation to a parliamentary select committee and to affirm that any sex-offenders registry must be public rather than closed. Blackman connected the question directly to the evening’s thesis. A registry, he said, is overdue and right, together with the bill’s provisions for no statute of limitations, mandatory reporting, and protections for child witnesses and vulnerable adults. “I do not want to be here saying that having a registry for sex offenders is a bad thing; we have them here in New York City.” The live issue, once again, is implementation and the collective will to build institutions that outlast any party. Opposing a measure, he argued, is not the same as engaging the levers of society to shape its outcome.

Lall, who named Minister Vindhya Persaud as among the few government ministers he respects, drew a stark line: a registry is a good thing; secrecy makes it a bad one. He cited his understanding that the minister’s own ministry had reported 584 underage pregnancies over five years — each, he noted, evidence of a statutory offense — to underscore the stakes of public notification, pointing to US jurisdictions where residents receive automatic alerts when a registered offender moves nearby. He questioned the claim that civil-society consultation favored a closed model, noting that some organizations had since said they never agreed, and credited the government’s senior leadership for reversing course. Roopnarine declined to comment on the bill, saying candidly that he did not know enough about it.

On security, the panel discussed the seizure of twenty-three AK-47 rifles linked to Venezuelan nationals, following an earlier seizure in Berbice. Blackman urged sustained vigilance against destabilizing criminal elements and framed safety as a cross-party obligation in which APNU, AFC, WIN, and the PPP alike hold a stake; he credited the police and cautioned against politicizing the matter. Lall stressed the gravity of military-grade weapons entering the country and asked how many more may have gone undetected. The discussion closed on the shape of the opposition. With WIN now the larger opposition bloc, the panel weighed the allocation of the opposition-appointed GECOM commissioner seats and the office of Leader of the Opposition. Lall argued that arrangements should be negotiated and shared between WIN and APNU rather than retained by the PNC alone, and observed that opposition figures — and, increasingly, government ministers — are visibly active in communities.

In closing, the panelists turned from critique to the question of what citizens might hope for. Blackman offered the evening’s most extended civic argument: democracy, he said, is not merely a mechanism for choosing a government but for keeping it honest, and the responsibility runs both ways. He challenged the opposition — naming Azruddin Mohamed, Terrence Campbell, and Amanza Walton-Desir — to demonstrate that they are a credible alternative for governing, not simply a catalog of the government’s failures. His concrete illustration returned to the night’s first subject: there should be a branch of the development ban

GBJ Data Note: The Ministry of Human Services and Social Security reportedly recorded 584 underage pregnancies over five years, each constituting a statutory offence.

Democracy is not merely a mechanism for choosing a government but for keeping it honest, and the responsibility runs both ways.

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