-Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
Yesterday’s commentary on the 2026 Mid-Year Report dealt with how housing was reported. Today’s concerns something potentially more serious involving the Berbice Bridge – a project dogged by controversy from its conception more than two decades ago. The omission is inexplicable and far too consequential to dismiss as an oversight by a Senior Minister.
This current round did not mysteriously emerge in September 2026. In August 2025, President Irfaan Ali said publicly that Government was already in the final stages of negotiations to acquire the Bridge and, significantly, that “the Minister of Finance is leading that.” By August 21, 2026, Singh had therefore been leading the negotiations for a full year. On that date, the members of Berbice Bridge Company Inc. (BBCI) resolved that the company be wound up voluntarily and appointed chartered accountant Raan Motilall as liquidator.
The Mid-Year Report is dated August 28, a week after that event, although it was not released until September 14. Yet the 119-page Report contains not a word about the proposed “acquisition” of BBCI by an over-accommodating Government, following negotiations which President Ali had said Singh was leading, or about the company’s August 21 decision to enter voluntary liquidation.
Yet within days of its release, the public learnt that Government had paid out $400 million in the very transaction the Report had ignored. This was no peripheral matter carelessly omitted from a long report.
A so-called explanation subsequently given by former BBCI Chairman Paul Cheong makes the transaction even more difficult to understand. Government did not, strictly speaking, pay $400 million to BBCI for the Bridge. Cheong says it bought all 400 million issued ordinary shares at $1 each, with the money paid to the existing shareholders.
That distinction is fundamental. A sale of existing shares is a transaction between seller and purchaser. The company does not receive the purchase price; its role is principally to recognise and register the transfer. If Government bought all the ordinary shares, it acquired ownership of those shares and the rights attaching to them; that did not, by itself, terminate or reverse the liquidation.
Once the shareholders resolved to wind up BBCI, the position changed completely. The winding-up took effect from the date of the resolution and any subsequent transfer of shares was void unless made to or with the sanction of the liquidator. If the $400 million transaction occurred after August 21, did Motilall sanction it? If before, why did Government buy the shares of a company whose members were about to put it into liquidation?
Significantly, the Government is no innocent outsider. Through NICIL, its investment arm, it was already part of BBCI’s corporate structure and held the special or “golden” share with substantial veto rights.
A share sale does not dispose of the company’s assets or liabilities. Liquidation does. What, then, was left for Motilall to liquidate? What assets and liabilities remained? What became of the preference shares, bonds and other financial instruments? And how did the winding-up fit into Government’s purchase of the ordinary shares?
As a measure of value, the claim that Government acquired an $8 billion Bridge for only $400 million is wrong, mischievous and misleading. The number of shares in issue tells us nothing about the value of the company. BBCI could have had four million shares instead of 400 million and Government could still have agreed to pay $400 million, or whatever sum. Multiplying 400 million shares by $1 is an arithmetic exercise, not a valuation.
Nor does Cheong’s reference to a $1 “nominal value” help. Guyana abolished par or nominal value for shares when the Companies Act 1991 came into force in 1995. If Government agreed to pay $1 per share, that was the purchase price, not some legally prescribed value.
The real valuation issue lies in the Concession Agreement. BBCI never owned the Bridge in perpetuity. It operated under a fixed-term concession due to expire in 2027. Under the Berbice River Bridge Act and the Concession Agreement, the Bridge and related rights and assets were to pass to Government at the end of the concession period, free of the relevant liens and encumbrances and in the condition required by the concession.
And what became of the Government’s much-vaunted principle of the “sanctity of contract”? President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo have repeatedly invoked that principle in relation to Exxon and the 2016 Petroleum Agreement. Yet here was another contract involving the State, with a clear end date and a clear obligation to transfer the Bridge to Government. If sanctity of contract is the inviolable principle Government says it is, why was the State paying $400 million for shares in the concessionaire only months before the contractual handover?
Sanctity cannot be an immutable principle when dealing with ExxonMobil and an inconvenience when dealing with the Berbice Bridge.
By September 2026, only months remained before the contractual handover. The relevant question is therefore not what the Bridge cost to build nearly twenty years earlier, nor the historical value of BBCI. Under the Concession Agreement, Government was shortly to receive the Bridge and the rights and assets required to be transferred with it. BBCI would remain responsible for its other assets, liabilities and obligations. Why, then, did Government need to buy BBCI’s ordinary shares at all – and what did the $400 million purchase give the State beyond what it was entitled to under the Concession Agreement?
Nor is there any basis yet for assuming that $400 million was the entire cost and obligation to the State. BBCI had obligations and securities beyond its ordinary shares. Its audited financial statements disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars in other obligations. Until there is a complete accounting of the liabilities, preference shares, debt instruments and any obligations assumed or discharged directly or indirectly by Government, the transaction should properly be described as involving at least $400 million, and potentially more.
Liquidation is a process that includes the statutory order of payment to all stakeholders. It is unfair to expect Ashni Singh and Paul Cheong to understand all its legal implications. And so I have to ask: where was the Attorney General, the principal legal adviser to the Government? A transaction of this nature surely demanded competent and independent legal advice. The failure to obtain or heed such advice may bring into play an even more critical piece of legislation – the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA).
This is no longer simply about whether Government negotiated a good or bad bargain. Section 31 of the FMAA regulates the requisition and payment of public money and requires the necessary certification before payment. Section 48 goes further: a Minister or official shall not “misuse, misapply, or improperly dispose of public moneys.” Section 49 provides for personal liability where a loss of public money is caused or contributed to through misconduct or deliberate or serious disregard of reasonable standards of care.
On the basis of publicly available information, there is no finding of statutory breaches. But their existence can change the character of the questions Government must answer. Who gave the legal advice? Who authorised and certified the payment? What valuation supported it? And what precisely did the State acquire for its money?
On housing, the problem was the disjointed inclusion of information in the Mid-Year Report. On the Berbice Bridge, it was the opposite – the exclusion of critical information within the knowledge of Dr. Singh. If $400 million – and potentially much more – of public money was paid out when it ought not to have been paid, the issue goes far beyond an omission from an accountability report. It raises questions of misuse or misapplication of public money and personal liability for loss of public funds, matters for which sections 48 and 49 of the FMAA expressly provide.
Discussion