-Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
Introduction
Mr Deodat Sharma, Auditor General has delivered his report on the 2025 public accounts. My information is that the Speaker, Mr Manzoor Nadir, has directed that it be sealed until the National Assembly next sits. The recess ends on 10 October, but that does not convene the Assembly. Sittings are called largely at the Government’s convenience, and this Government goes to Parliament mainly when it needs money. The report could therefore remain sealed for months.
If there is any interest in, let alone, commitment to accountability, there is no excuse for further delay. The Standing Orders provide for papers to be laid only at a sitting, but they also allow the Speaker to recall the Assembly early where the public interest requires it. With every audit report since 2020 still unexamined, it is hard to imagine a stronger case. Nadir must act now, rather than wait on the Leader of the House. That he has not done so already is consistent with his conduct generally, which suggests that he regards himself as lord of the National Assembly.
There is a related matter. I understand that the Auditor General will not meet the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee before the report is tabled. Perhaps he prefers to face questions comforted by the presence of the PPP/C members of the Committee. But the Audit Act does not leave this to him. Section 45 places the Audit Office, and the Auditor General himself, under the Committee’s supervision, and sections 42 and 43 require him to report to it every quarter and every year. If he insists that he answers to the Committee and not to its Chairman, the Committee should summon him formally, and its PPP/C members can show where they stand. No one is asking him to disclose the report early. His independence protects his audit opinions, not his reluctance to answer questions.
In anticipation of the Report being made public and one or two matters used to sensationalise and lend it credence, I will use the coming weeks to review the recent Reports of the Audit Office, their strengths and weaknesses. But let me raise some preliminary issues to contextualise the Audit Office and these annual reports.
Problems at the top
Sharma was lucky to be confirmed as Auditor General because MP Trevor Williams, an AFC member on the PAC was unfortunately absent from one of its meeting. Many now wonder whether he was pioneering a more recent floodgate! Sharma does not hold a professional qualification for the most important audit position in the country. But worse, he is disqualified from continuing in that past, at least since he attained age 68, and possibly three years earlier. Sharma reached 68 in March 2026 and asked the President for a two-year extension. None has been announced, yet he remains. An Auditor General who stays on at the President’s pleasure, outside anything the law provides, is in no position to displease the Executive whose accounts he audits. Particularly the President’s pet projects including Silica City.
The problem with Sharma’s deputy goes beyond age or gender. Mrs Geetanjali Singh is the wife of the Minister responsible for Finance, who bears ultimate responsibility for the budgeting, spending and accounting of public moneys, and who prepares the public accounts for audit. She is a qualified accountant; the Auditor General is not. The Transparency Institute of Guyana told an OAS review team in 2013 that she was widely regarded as the Office’s de facto head. We have been assured that there is a silo separating the ministries and departments from the other entities. If such a silo exists, it is made not of walls, but of smoke. It also misses the point completely: the auditor and the audited sit, in effect, at the same table.
Between Sharma and his deputy, they decide what in the public sector is audited, and how thoroughly. Two examples make the point. The Audit Office has kept – not contracted out – the audit of the Natural Resource Fund for itself and consistently gives the Fund’s financial statements a clean opinion. It has done so even though, as I have repeatedly stated in my Oil and Gas column, that the Fund continues to be operated in breach of Article 15.4 of the Petroleum Agreement. Sharma and Singh have retained for their Office the audit of the Central Housing and Planning Authority and given its accounts a clean opinion too. Yet those accounts say nothing about Silica City, and the Auditor General says nothing about the Authority’s failure to produce the annual reports the law requires.
Tax concessions are another blind spot. Section 38 of the Investment Act requires the Auditor General to audit, every year, the incentives granted to investors and to lay his report in the National Assembly within six months of the year’s end. Apart from a sample of 23 applications in his 2022 report, I can find no evidence that he has ever done so.
Backlog
In any single year, only a fraction of the more than one hundred public enterprises, statutory bodies and government companies, such as GuySuCo, are up to date with their audits. The Auditor General’s own 2024 report puts the number at about a fifth of that total. Worse, in several cases the arrears are greatest where the money is largest. For example, in 2024, the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority received $32.6 billion, yet its accounts have not been audited since 2016. The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation received $18.8 billion; its last completed audit is for 2019. GuySuCo received $15.5 billion, but no report on it has been laid in the National Assembly since 2016.
The Auditor General reports these delays as breaches by others and recommends that they “follow up”. His own tables tell a different story. They show accounts submitted and sitting unaudited in his Office: twelve years for the Guyana Livestock Development Authority, eleven for the National Parks Commission, seven each for the drainage authority and the National Data Management Authority.
Nor does Sharma seem to recognise any obligation beyond the annual report. Sections 42 and 43 of the Audit Act require him to report quarterly and annually to the Public Accounts Committee on his Office’s performance. Section 44 requires the Committee to appoint an independent auditor of the Office, and section 45 gives it general supervision over him. None of his last three reports mentions any of this. The Committee should say whether it has received the reports sections 42 and 43 require. If it has not, he would be in breach of the very Act he invokes against others.
I will delve into the reports in the next couple articles. Meanwhile, please contain your anticipation.
Discussion