Ram & McRae flags misuse of Natural Resource Fund

Local accounting firm Ram & McRae has cautioned that Guyana’s Natural Resource Fund (NRF) is being used in ways that undermine its original purpose, and warned of growing fiscal and institutional risks in this year’s $1.5 trillion proposed budget estimates.

Emphasizing the PPP/C government’s growing reliance on the NRF, the accounting firm high-lighted that the public should be very concerned that the fund designed to safeguard petroleum wealth; smoothing revenue volatility, protecting competitiveness, and preserving  wealth for future generations, is now called the government’s “central pillar” of fiscal strategy.

“The Budget has, in effect, become dependent on oil withdrawals for its basic viability,” the firm stated in a published analysis, pointing out that drawdowns now finance nearly half of current revenue. It added that successive changes to withdrawal rules have accelerated reliance on the fund, shifting policy “from treating oil revenues as volatile and exhaustible, to treating them as ordinary budgetary income.”