
Opinion

A proposal for 30% salary increase phased in by 10% over three years should be offered to the teachers’ union
The Teachers’ Union is demanding a 50% salary increase. To be paid in one-shot. The Government is offering 6.5%. There is a huge gap here. Pundits and Opinion-makers should offer up some numbers. How do we bridge this yawning gap? I suggest a 30% increase covering 3-years, to be phased in at 10% each year….


Cost of Living Index data is missing or unreliable
There had been apparent controversy regarding both prices and incomes data generated by official reports purportedly measuring the Guyana Cost of Living, reflected by the Consumer Price Index, CPI and the Nominal Gross Domestic Product, GDP. There is a further complication as the World Bank raised Guyana’s low income status to a high income status…

ExxonMobil and Politics
Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded – Column 121 – February 16, 2024 Exxon is no stranger to politics. It understands the importance of billboards (India and Guyana) and the politics of Buses (the USA and the Tories BREXIT bus). Just in case anyone missed it, Exxon is now on a…

OGGN United Nations submission on Guyana is now posted on UN website
On the UN website, at this link: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=INT%2FCCPR%2FCSS%2FGUY%2F57380&Lang=en, you can now find the OGGN’s submission to the United Nations. Or here:

Gov’t cannot be making excuses about deferring oil returns to some future date
Equity ownership in a business implies that an investor becomes a shareholder; and therefore, has access to complete information; has decision-making authority that is based on the relative size of the funds invested; and receives a share of the total profits, calculated on the shareholder’s ownership of the total invested funds. In the case of…

ExxonMobil Guyana Limited profit squeeze
A distinguishing feature of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) between ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) and the Government of Guyana (GOG) is the contrived way in which total cost is specified in the business. In particular, the total cost (TC) is specified as: TC = 0.75TR = 0.75PQ, where TR is total revenue, P is the…

Ram and McRae 2024 budget review
This document is posted with permission from Ram & McRae. The opinions in this document do no necessarily reflect the views of OGGN.

Venezuela achieved all that they set out for in their 2021 Acuerdo and the Joint Declaration of Argyle
In his letter published in Stabroek News on 13 January 2024, Mr. Nascimento re-stated my position. In his words, ‘it is only Venezuela which is the aggressor and, by its Referendum, threatens the use of force’. Why, then, would Guyana have felt pressured ‘with equivalence’ [Nascimento’s words] to let stand Point 1 of the Joint…

The NRF is indeed overstated
The Oil & Gas Governance Network (OGGN) Guyana notes that Stabroek News on January 13, 2024 carried a letter by Mr Dhanraj Deonarine with the title “Is the NRF really overstated?” The letter suggests that the claim by Mr. Ram that the Natural Resource Fund (NRF), Guyana’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, is overstated “is not such…