HGP Nightly News – The ink is barely dry on Guyana’s $1.558 trillion national budget, but the Government has already sought another $54.8 billion, a move former Finance Minister Winston Jordan says exposes weak planning, poor accountability, and a Parliament that is failing to properly scrutinise public spending.
During an exclusive interview with Nightly News, Jordan said supplementary budgets are not new under the PPP/C administration, but argued that the scale and timing of this latest request should concern citizens.
“If you go back throughout the history of the PPP government, this is not new,” Jordan said, noting that previous PPP/C administrations have returned for supplementary funds even late in the fiscal year.
However, he said the latest request is evidence that public spending is not being managed properly.
“It is a recognition of very poor planning. It’s very poor management of the resources,” Jordan said.
The former Finance Minister was especially critical of the explanations given for the additional funds, including references to accelerated work programmes.
According to Jordan, such broad explanations are not enough when government is asking Parliament to approve billions of dollars only months after the national budget was passed.
He argued that Parliament should be demanding detailed answers before approving any major supplementary request.
“If a Parliament, notwithstanding the fact that the government has a majority, can consider passing a bill of such magnitude a couple of months after the presentation of a budget, with frivolous explanations as accelerated work programme, then Parliament has lost its reason for existence in many ways,” Jordan said.
He also accused the government of using its parliamentary majority to avoid meaningful accountability.
“The government feels, with a runaway majority of six seats, that it doesn’t have to be accountable,” he said.
Jordan compared Guyana’s parliamentary process with other jurisdictions, saying that in places like the United States, even minority opposition lawmakers aggressively question funding requests.
He said that kind of scrutiny is largely absent in Guyana.
“You can’t even ask a question in our Parliament pertaining to, well, you’re asking for $19 million on the gas-to-shore. You had $1 billion before. What was the $1 billion spent on?” Jordan said.
He said MPs should be able to ask how much of previous allocations has already been spent, what remains outstanding, and what new money is intended to cover.
Jordan further claimed that ministers often avoid giving full answers by promising to provide documents later, but those documents are rarely supplied.
“Ministers use the tactic of saying, ‘well, I don’t have the answers to that now,’ or ‘I don’t have the documentation, I will send it.’ But when you check, you will see rare has any document been sent,” he said.
According to Jordan, this weakens Parliament’s oversight role and leaves large spending requests without proper examination.
He was blunt in his criticism of the institution.
“Of the three branches of government, the Parliament is the worst of the lot in Guyana,” Jordan said.
He added, “People are becoming disgusted with the Parliament. It’s a joke. It’s a rubber stamp.”
Jordan said the concern is even greater now because the sums being requested are no longer small.
“Billions now are being asked, maybe hundreds of millions that we were accustomed to not so long ago,” he said.
He argued that there is not enough rigour in the way Parliament interrogates why additional money is being requested, what it will be spent on, and whether previous spending produced value.
Jordan also criticised post-spending accountability, saying audit reports often fail to properly examine outcomes or question whether money was well spent.
“The rigour in the Auditor General’s report also is not there,” he said.
For Jordan, the $54.8 billion supplementary budget is not simply a request for additional funds. He said it points to a wider breakdown in planning, oversight and accountability.
The former Finance Minister said the public should be concerned when government can return to Parliament for billions more so soon after the passage of the national budget, while providing limited explanations and facing limited scrutiny.
