President’s speech on  debt burden was a dud

Dear Editor,

The President’s response on the debt burden Guyana is currently saddled with reminds me of my boyhood days when we would shake the carbon in a can and then apply some fire for it to explode. We were all excited when it made that deafening sound. Everyone cheers. However, sometimes it does not explode, we became sad and say it was a “SUS”. Simply put, it was a failure.

This is exactly what happened with the President’s speech on the debt burden – it was a SUS.

Mr. President, we all learnt that when undertaking analytical work, one must be cognizant of the facts, but more specifically the comparative numbers must reflect the same base. In other works, as the saying goes “you cannot compare apples with oranges”. 

Mr. Surujdai Juglall, in reviewing the Ministry of Finance Mid-Year Report 2026 in Kiskadee Watch nails the base of the argument. He posits that when comparing pre-oil GDP with post-oil GDP, one must be mindful to use the same base. In this case, the only qualifying base is the pre-oil GDP.

As Mr. Juglall correctly surmised, the current debt to GDP without oil production is over 150%. Let me repeat this, the current debt to non-oil GDP is more than 150%. Are we moving back to the dark ages you alluded to in your “SUS” remarks?

Sincerely,

Charles Sugrim