HGP Nightly News – After decades of high electricity costs and unreliable supply, the government says Guyana is on the brink of a major shift that could significantly reduce monthly power bills for households and businesses.
Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, has outlined that the Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project at Wales, combined with major upgrades to the national transmission and distribution network, is expected to cut electricity costs by as much as 50 per cent once fully operational.
According to Dr. Singh, Guyana currently has about 250 megawatts of reliable generating capacity on the grid, with more than 186 megawatts added over the past five years. The GTE project is expected to inject an additional 300 megawatts into the system, effectively doubling national capacity. However, the minister acknowledged that generation alone has not been Guyana’s core problem.
Instead, weak and outdated transmission and distribution infrastructure has been responsible for frequent outages and inefficiencies.As a result, more than half of the $119.4 billion allocated to the energy sector in Budget 2026 is being directed toward rebuilding and modernising the grid.
Officials say these investments will introduce redundancy into the system, allowing electricity to be rerouted during faults and reducing the scale and duration of blackouts caused by accidents or equipment failures. Dr. Singh explained that the shift to gas-based power generation will dramatically lower production costs by reducing dependence on imported fuel.
Those savings, he said, are expected to flow through to consumers in the form of lower electricity tariffs. Beyond household relief, the government argues that cheaper and more reliable electricity is critical for industrial growth, job creation and competitiveness, particularly in manufacturing, agro-processing and mining.
Electricity costs have long been cited by businesses as a major barrier to expansion. Officials maintain that once power prices fall and reliability improves, Guyana’s non-oil economy will be better positioned to grow alongside the petroleum sector.
While the government has not provided a specific timeline for when consumers will see the full impact on their bills, it maintains that the combination of the GTE project and grid upgrades marks the most significant transformation of Guyana’s electricity sector in decades.
