
By Svetlana Marshall
Warning that Guyana could find itself plagued by the Dutch Disease in the absence of the prudent management of its resources, Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Nigel Hughes, is calling on the Government to reconsider the $1.3 Trillion 2025 National Budget in consultation with the Opposition.
In an interview with News Source, Hughes said the budget is lopsided, focusing heavily on public infrastructure while offering a pittance to the poor and vulnerable.
“We have a cost-of-living crisis, we have people who are struggling to make ends meet, and we have a lack of capacity in infrastructure projects. So, the government should really call in the parliamentary parties and say, let us first of all establish what our priorities would be, those priorities include the people first and then infrastructure, and begin to structure a budget base on those priorities,” Hughes said.
In making his case, Hughes said the Government proposes to spend $9 Billion on cost-of-living measures while allocating $209 Billion for roads and bridges when the country has long exceeded its capacity to deliver in the sector.
“This government has chosen to put almost a billion US Dollar into infrastructure, and has only put GUY$9B into the reduction of the cost of living. This is a big business budget. There are no measures not only for those at the lower end of the scale, there are no measures in the medium level of the scale…The people at the bottom of the employment level have got virtually no relief, none. And this hundred thousand that they are getting as a grant, it is a pittance, they can’t invest it, they can’t start a business with it. Essentially, it is only going to be there to buy retail goods,” Hughes reasoned.
He said billions of dollars is being pumped into infrastructure projects, without a proper plan in place, fearing that to continue along this path could head right into the Dutch Disease.

“In the absence of an overall national infrastructural policy and programme, you are just spending money as projects come up. That is a recipe for disaster. We are heading straight into Dutch Disease,” he said.
According to the AFC Leader, it is time to “balance” the budget
He said the budget is top heavy on measures to make the rich even more “outrageously rich”, while keeping the poor continuously dependent on hand outs. He said the budget needs a complete rethink and overhaul and not just amending.
“We cannot in 2025 allow this level of transfer of wealth to a small, already ridiculously wealthy set of friends family, favourites and flatters while rest of the society looks on and struggles with the high cost of living”, he noted.
It was explained that while the country’s economy grew by 43.6% primarily due to the booming oil sector, some traditional sectors such as sugar and gold continue to underperform.
“Your non-oil economy is what is going to generate the foreign currency to pay off the loans and other foreign debt. The oil money that comes in, goes to the Natural Resource Fund. We ought to have long term plans for that. What we should have heard from the minister of finance, was a separate report that compares the income we have been getting from non-oil economy against our expenditures. All of our expenditures and that figure is actually going to be frightening because they deficit the deficit is going to be even worse,” the AFC leader said.
In 2024, the Central Government recorded a deficit of $376.4 Billion or 7.3% of the GDP. Overall, Central Government’s expenditure stood at $1.2 Trillion, exceeding the $784.6 billion in revenue earnings.
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