The People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) today said that Transparency International’s Report on perceived corruption in Guyana is an accurate reflection of the current state of affairs in the country.

The just released report describes Guyana as a state captured by economic and political elites fostering misappropriation of resources, illicit enrichment and environmental crime.

The report has been rejected by President Irfaan Ali, but Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton, at a press conference today, said the Government, by its own volition, has admitted that the procurement system was corrupted, and that “certain families” and friends of the government were hogging most of the contracts.

“The government has allowed NPTAB and regional tender boards to repeatedly violate the procurement legislation. It has done nothing to strengthen the Public Procurement Commission,” the Opposition Leader said.

Norton said the Government has purposely appointed a Commissioner of Information who has strangulated the Access to Information Act, which would have empowered Guyanese to scrutinize Government actions and decisions.

“It refuses to reveal important agreements and contracts, especially those in the oil and gas sector. It has blocked, ducked, or diluted opposition motions and questions that seek critical information or propose open discussion. It has reassigned top public officials who have been entangled in scandal and corruption, such as the former PS of the Ministry of Home Affairs, a PPP Party member. It has used delaying tactics to stymie the work of the Public Accounts Committee to ensure that the Auditor General reports from 2020 do not complete its agenda. It has failed to investigate Su-gate and all the other high-level corruption scams. The list goes on,” Norton said.

He said the PPP/C Administration continues to ignore the guard rails of democracy as it “plunders” the wealth of the people of Guyana.

He said President Ali “can protest the findings until the cows come home,” but the fact remains that the country has bled tens of billions of dollars each year under the PPP government through corruption, insider trading, misappropriation of state assets, conflicts of interest, and cronyism.

At a separate press conference, Alliance For Change (AFC)Executive, Khemraj Ramjattan said the report vindicates the Alliance’s characterization of the government as “corrupt”.

He said President Ali’s response to the report is “hollow.”

“President Ali’s response that the body’s report are accurated by political bias is hollow to say the least. All Guyanese know that what is in the report is very much the reality. Contracts are awarded to friends and family, substandard work is done by unqualified contractors, billions of dollars are wasted and discriminatory distributed and even more billions go unaccounted for. And, when progressive voices speak out there is harassment of these critics and commentariats, as I call them, via the route of threatened and actual prosecutions, threats to deploy the tax authorities,” Ramjattan said.

MP Ramjattan said in an attempt to avoid scrutiny at the parliamentary level, the Government continues to suppress the work of the Parliament.

“The corruption also is the reason why there is non-operationalization and deliberate dysfunction of the very many parliamentary committees that have to scrutinize spendings especially our oil revenues.  Statutory and constitutional commissions and committees are not being constituted and we have been stating about the Petroleum Commission and the Parliamentary Security Committee among others,” he explained.

In its 2025 Report, Transparency International gave Guyana a score of 39 out of 100 on the Transparency indicator.

Related posts:

President hammers Transparency International as “dishonest” for its report on perceived corruption in Guyana President dismisses Transparency International’s latest report on corruption in Guyana as “politically biased” Transparency International rates Guyana’s corruption law enforcement very low, as dissenting voices face more attacks Transparency Group calls for Commission of Inquiry into corruption allegations made against Jagdeo