Human Rights Association wants transparency on massive spending from Oil Fund

The Guyana Human Rights Association has joined the chorus of voices calling for more transparency and information about the management of the country’s Natural Resource Fund, pointing out that large sums of money appears to have been taken from the fund for more projects and programmes not associated with national development.

In a statement, the GHRA said there needs to be a policy on how all Guyanese can benefit holistically from the country’s oil wealth and not just a few elites.

It highlighted that in neighbouring Suriname, the Government announced a policy remunerating citizens as the rightful owners of commonly inherited natural oil resources.

The GHRA said in Guyana, there appears to be a looting of resources.

The body reminded that the Natural Resource Fund emerged from a national consultation on a 2018 Green Paper on the wisdom of creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and that a number of civic organisations made proposals and recommendations on the management of the fund, including a policy for withdrawal and its limit to specific projects.

However, the GHRA said these proposals were undermined when the government amended the NRF Act.

“This zealous concern for cautious spending from the NRF has been progressively undermined by legal amendments in 2024 which allowed Government access to almost the entire Fund for budget support purposes. Specificity over non-reporting on the actual uses of the Fund have also subsequently been dismissed by Government as too complicated – ‘balkanized’ was the suitably vague term to defend lack of accountability,” the GHRA noted.

The human rights body said one feature of the NRF Act, is the development of complex procedures to project an image of concern for accountability, transparency and other postures that appeal particularly to international actors, but are then never effectively implemented.

“In the case of the NRF Act, a Public Oversight and Accountability Committee (POAC) suggests concern for transparency, an Investment Committee suggests independence from Government. The reality is that the POAC has never been heard from ever and the Investment Committee has been side-lined by statistical manoeuvring and fine print,” the body stated.

In recent weeks, the main Opposition parties have been raising concern over the spending of the country’s oil resources, expressing concern over what they see as a reckless haste for raiding the Fund.