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The Tragic Cases of Three Pensioners
There is something profoundly troubling – indeed heartbreaking – about watching the National Insurance Scheme report what appears to be a dramatic financial turnaround while, at the same time, the attitude of both the Government and the Scheme towards pensioners appears to be hardening.
For years the NIS was regarded as financially fragile. Successive actuarial reviews warned about deficits and long-term sustainability. The national conversation about the Scheme was dominated by concern about whether it could meet its obligations in the future.
Today that picture is beginning to change.
Employment has expanded, contributions have increased, and the structure of the economy itself has altered significantly. The emergence of the oil and gas sector has introduced into the system a group of relatively young, highly paid contributors, many of whom earn well above the insurable earnings ceiling. Many of these workers may spend only limited periods in insurable employment in Guyana before moving elsewhere in the international labour market. They are replaced by equally highly paid workers.
It is the kind of situation of which most fund managers can only dream. From the perspective of the Scheme’s finances, this is a financial windfall from above. Contributions increase while both short and long-term benefit obligations associated with many of those contributors will never materialise. The results are already visible. The Scheme has begun reporting improved financial outcomes, including a return to surpluses after years of concern about deficits. Losses of hundreds of millions are now converted into billions in annual surpluses.
Yet, as the financial fortunes of the Scheme improve, the treatment of pensioners appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Whether it is inertia or bad will actual and potential pensioners lose out. The Government adjusts the minimum pension only reluctantly and belatedly. The first full year of oil production saw the minimum pension increased from $32,100 to $35,000 per month. It remained there for four years after which it moved to $43,075 per month.
Meanwhile, cost of living moved up, and up and up.
The harshness directed at the thousands were tragically directed at those who sought to stand up for their rights. Here are three cases of which I am painfully aware.
The first concerns the carpenter whose employer deducted National Insurance contributions from his wages but failed to remit them fully to the Scheme. When he applied for his pension, the claim was refused. He successfully challenged the decision and took the matter to court, but his victory proved short lived. One might reasonably have expected the matter to end there. It was the only time ever that the NIS appealed such a decision. The word is that the Government compelled the NIS to appeal the case and to ask that the decision be stayed. No money for Borther Zainul. He is still waiting, even as his health deteriorates. The Government’s excuse: that allowing the claim might create a precedent and “open the floodgates.”
The second case reflects a different but equally painful reality. A pensioner who believed that she had satisfied the statutory requirement of 750 contributions was informed that she was short by four contributions.
Four contributions out of seven hundred and fifty.
After months of struggle, she eventually instructed that the case be withdrawn. In explaining her decision, she wrote that she was not withdrawing the claim because she believed she was wrong. She was doing so because the process had exhausted her. The delays, the resistance and the strain of the struggle had taken a serious toll on her health and peace of mind. At her stage of life, she simply no longer had the strength to continue fighting the system.
The third case may be the most tragic of all. An appeal concerning pension entitlement was filed in 2010. It was not heard until 2023 – Thirteen years later. The delay was not attributable to the claimant. When the Appeal Tribunal eventually ruled in his favour, one might have expected the long ordeal finally to end.
Instead, the implementation of the decision itself has been delayed. Today the claimant still waits for the benefits which the Tribunal determined he is entitled to receive.
In the meantime, he has been diagnosed with cancer. He is in his late eighties. Now he wonders if his surviving nephew who cares for him will be able to continue his claim!
These are not merely administrative cases. They are human stories. Three pensioners. One who won in court but still cannot obtain his pension. One who abandoned her claim because the struggle became unbearable. And the last one who waited thirteen years for justice and now waits again while battling a life-threatening illness.
These cases raise an uncomfortable truth. It is easier in this country to obtain a tax refund than to prevail against the callous National Insurance Scheme administration. But the Government is no better – and probably worse. My messages and email to President Ali are ignored. That it seems is because they care.
The National Insurance Scheme was created as a social insurance institution. Its purpose was to provide security in old age to workers who had contributed during their productive years. It was never intended to become an adversarial institution engaged in prolonged struggles with pensioners.
These examples are about cruelty and callousness. In a country newly enriched by oil, it is especially difficult to justify.
The passing of Stabroek News and the State’s Media
Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
The impending closure of Stabroek News marks the end of one of the most significant institutions in Guyana’s modern media history. For nearly four decades the newspaper occupied a central place in the country’s public life and was widely recognised as one of the voices that helped sustain the struggle for democratic restoration, culminating in the return to free and fair elections in 1992.
This is not to suggest that Stabroek News represented the entirety of Guyana’s independent media. Other private newspapers, including Kaieteur News, as well as a growing number of online platforms, continue to operate and contribute to the country’s information landscape. But Stabroek News distinguished itself in several important respects. It developed a reputation for editorial independence, it functioned for many years as a kind of newspaper of record, and its letters page provided perhaps the most open and democratic public forum in Guyana. Over time that column became something of an informal national meeting place where academics, trade unionists, political figures, public servants, businesspeople and ordinary citizens debated, as equals, matters of public importance. In a society where structured spaces for civic and civil discussion are limited, that platform allowed citizens to speak directly to each other, and to those who govern.
Yet as the newspaper prepares to close its doors, the Government has uttered not a single word acknowledging its contribution. That silence is striking. Governments have often had difficult relationships with independent media. That is neither unusual nor necessarily unhealthy. But when a publication with such a long and consequential history disappears without even a word from those who exercise public authority, the silence itself becomes part of the story.
The conduct of the Government towards the Stabroek News over several years has been less than healthy for a fledgling democracy. This makes that silence all the more troubling. There is something distasteful when, following the closure announcement and the passage of a $1.5 trillion budget, the Government pays a mere $7.5 million towards a debt of approximately $90 million owed for advertising services going back a year. To compound matters, with more than a fortnight before closure, the Government stopped all advertising in the paper. That is beyond distasteful.
Yet, none of this should be misunderstood as suggesting that government advertising is the principal reason for the newspaper’s demise. Like newspapers around the world, Stabroek News has been confronting the structural challenges facing print media in the digital age. Readership patterns have changed dramatically, and fewer readers are willing to purchase printed editions – or even pay for electronic versions – of newspapers. Those economic realities have affected the entire industry, Stabroek News included.
The Government’s posture toward the newspaper nevertheless sits uneasily alongside the substantial public resources devoted to the State’s own media operations. The 2026 Estimates show that significant public funds continue to be directed to Government media entities. Under the Office of the Prime Minister – Programme “Government Information and Services”, the National Communications Network (NCN) is allocated $490.192 million for 2026. In addition, the Public Sector Investment Programme provides $75 million in capital funding for upgrading and expanding the NCN network. The Guyana National Newspapers Limited, publisher of the State-owned newspaper, also receives millions towards its capital expenditure, and the lion’s share of the government’s advertising budget, out of the Department of Public Information.
That entity will this year be receiving $480 million from the Treasury. By the most conservative measure, the Estimates show that well over one billion dollars in public funds is devoted annually to the Government’s information and media apparatus.
No one seriously suggests that governments do not have a legitimate role in communicating information to the public. The question is not whether government communication should exist. The issue is whether the allocation of public resources reflects a healthy balance between state communication and the survival of independent media.
There is another dimension that should not be ignored. The Auditor General has repeatedly reported that several state-owned enterprises are behind in the preparation, audit and tabling of their financial statements, limiting timely parliamentary scrutiny of entities supported by public funds. The accounts of the National Communications Network have historically reached the National Assembly years after the period to which they relate. The Department of Public Information, meanwhile, operates not as a separate corporation but as a department within the Office of the Prime Minister and therefore does not produce a distinct set of publicly tabled financial statements.
The contrast is therefore difficult to overlook. An independent newspaper that has played a significant role in the country’s democratic evolution now faces closure amid official silence, while substantial public resources continue to sustain the State’s own media institutions.
The disappearance of an independent newspaper also raises wider questions about the future of public discourse in Guyana. Democracies depend not only on elections but on the existence of institutions capable of facilitating informed debate and holding power to account. Newspapers historically performed that function not only through their reporting and editorials but also by providing a structured space in which citizens could exchange views on matters affecting the national interest. When such institutions disappear, the loss is not simply commercial. It alters the universe of public discussion. The challenge for any democratic society is to ensure that independent voices – like Stabroek News and Kaieteur News – remain part of that national conversation.
Interestingly, while the Government has remained silent, Guyanese society has not. In the days since the closure was announced, the letters pages have been filled with tributes from across the country. Writers from every segment of society – academics, trade unionists, political figures, professionals and ordinary citizens – have expressed their sense of loss, mourning not only the passing of a newspaper but the disappearance of a national institution.
One voice alone has been conspicuously absent.
The silence speaks for itself.
Old friends, new friends and the price of alignment
Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
Long admired as a model non-aligned small country, Guyana now finds that image replaced by a photograph from the recent Trump-sponsored “Shield of the Americas” summit in Florida. President Irfaan Ali appeared prominently among the leaders assembled by the United States and spoke of the need for change in Cuba so that democracy and improved conditions could be achieved for the Cuban people.
What was notable about those remarks was what they did not contain. There was not a word about the economic embargo that the United States has imposed on Cuba for more than sixty years – an embargo that CARICOM governments have consistently condemned as unjust and harmful to the Cuban people. Nor anything about the rendition of the leader of a Caribbean country or the killing of citizens of the region.
The comments also appeared to signal something else: that countries in the region are expected to reconsider, nay discontinue, their relationships with traditional partners. For the Caribbean, those partners include countries that have supported the region for decades.
Cuba is one of those partners. For decades Cuban doctors, teachers and technicians have worked across the Caribbean. Thousands of Caribbean students – including hundreds of Guyanese – have received professional education in Cuban universities in medicine, engineering and agricultural science.
Grenada offers a vivid example of the complexities that sometimes accompany relations between small states and larger powers. During the People’s Revolutionary Government, Cuban workers helped build the island’s first, and still only, international airport. When that government collapsed in October 1983, the United States invaded Grenada, an intervention carried out at the “request” of Governor-General Paul Scoon and supported by Prime Ministers Tom Adams of Barbados, Eugenia Charles of Dominica and Edward Seaga of Jamaica. More than four decades later Grenada remains closely aligned with Washington’s position on Cuba, even as it continues to rely on China for infrastructure and on Cuba for training of its budding professionals.
For Guyana, China represents a different but equally significant relationship. For more than two decades Chinese financing and technical cooperation have contributed to major infrastructure projects including the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the Marriott hotel, the new Demerara River Bridge, major roadworks and river ferries, projects that were otherwise beyond our country’s reach.
Those accepting Trump’s invitation are now expected to review their relationships with such partners. This reflects a familiar expectation: that America’s competitors – and enemies – must also become our competitors – and enemies. Yet what does the United States offer in return? It has cut programmes once provided to poor countries across the world, including the Caribbean, through USAID and the Peace Corps, while its current leadership speaks casually of wars and engages in the assassination or rendition of foreign leaders, all in violation of international law.
There is nothing inherently objectionable about foreign investment. Guyana has long depended on external capital and expertise to develop its natural resources. The question arising from Ali’s Florida visit is whether Guyana is being asked to distance itself from certain old friends while deepening its dependence on new ones.
Such questions are not merely theoretical. Guyana’s rapidly expanding petroleum industry has elevated its strategic importance within the hemisphere, and countries that suddenly discover valuable natural resources tend to attract considerable attention from larger powers.
At the same time, the President’s remarks in Miami about democracy in Cuba invite reflection on democracy at home. The Sunday Stabroek News editorial of March 8 observed that “there is something about remaining in power too long which disconnects incumbents from reality and causes them to incline towards autocratic modes of governance.” It also reminded readers that democracy “means more than free and fair elections” and depends on functioning institutions and respect for the rule of law.
Those observations resonate with developments in Guyana’s own political environment. Delays in convening Parliament following the September 1 elections, the failure to establish parliamentary committees in a timely manner, the unresolved leadership of Region Ten and the continuing absence of substantive appointments to the offices of Chancellor of the Judiciary and Chief Justice all raise legitimate questions about the functioning of democratic institutions.
Equally troubling are the Ali administration’s attempts to dominate democratic space and exert influence over institutions intended to operate independently. Its selective regard for the rule of law – access to information being an egregious example – and its appointment of individuals and institutions to frustrate democratic processes raise further concerns in areas such as environmental regulation, procurement oversight, state audit and transparency initiatives including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Guyana must inevitably engage with powerful partners. The United States remains an important trading partner and a significant source of investment, and constructive engagement with Washington is both natural and desirable.
In his final term, President Ali – a relative newcomer to international diplomacy – appears eager to build a profile on the global stage. As former President Jagdeo did quite successfully, there is nothing unusual about such ambition. But repositioning Guyana within the geopolitical landscape of the hemisphere would represent one of the most consequential foreign-policy pivots since independence, and it should therefore be approached with caution. Jagdeo did not go that far.
As Henry Kissinger once observed, “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend can be fatal.” In cultivating new friendships, President Ali would do well not to forget the value of those old friendships – or the importance of preserving Guyana’s independence and sovereignty in the process.
President Ali calls for removal of trade barriers in St. Kitts – then imposes his own in Guyana
Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
This column supports President Irfaan Ali’s call in St. Kitts for the removal of artificial barriers to trade within CARICOM. The principle, enshrined in Treaty and incorporated into domestic law, is sound. The Caribbean Single Market and Economy to which Guyana is a signatory frowns on any attempt by a Member State to erect fiscal or administrative walls protecting domestic operations against other members’ goods and services.
The principle applies to every Member State – domestic and regional alike. The Caribbean Court of Justice settled this question in 2014 in Rudisa Beverages & Juices N.V. v The State of Guyana, a case brought by a Surinamese company challenging an environmental tax amendment under the Guyana Customs Act.
The Court may have acknowledged the stated objective of the legislation, but it held that motive and form are irrelevant; effect is what matters. If the effect of an internal fiscal measure alters competitive conditions in favour of locally produced goods as against like goods of Community origin, it is inconsistent with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Against that legal background, the recent tax amendment introduced by Dr. Ashni Singh in his 2026 Budget, zero-rating locally produced furniture and jewellery, fails at the first hurdle. By the Bill’s plain language, the benefit is confined to Guyanese production. Furniture and jewellery manufactured in other CARICOM states do not enjoy the same treatment. That is differential taxation based solely on origin. Anyone familiar with the Treaty and Rudisa would immediately recognise the difficulty.
In functional terms, it is precisely the type of discriminatory fiscal measure the CCJ warned against. The inconsistency will not go unnoticed within the Community. Guyana has already been required to compensate Rudisa in substantial sums. It would be unfortunate to invite a repetition. The measure should be reconsidered before it produces another avoidable and embarrassing defeat.
But there is a broader issue. Guyana produces gold in abundance. No other CARICOM country does. It has commercially harvested timber. No other CARICOM country comes close. To attempt to protect such businesses defies economic logic and raises the question of the kind of private sector we are trying to build. Protection is not integration. If our manufacturers require origin-based tax advantages to survive within the Single Market, then we are not preparing them to compete regionally: we are mollycoddling them, protecting them from their own inefficiencies.
The asymmetry in regional enterprise is instructive. Republic Bank Limited, a Trinidad and Tobago enterprise, operates profitably in Guyana. Yet not one of our indigenous banks – Citizens Bank, Demerara Bank or GBTI – operates in that country. They appear comfortable in a Guyana market that functions more like a sheltered environment than a competitive one. The pattern repeats across sectors: capital, brands, and services move outward into Guyana far more readily than Guyanese enterprises expand outward into the region.
The pattern repeats elsewhere. Banks DIH Limited gave Barbados the “Banks” beer, which that country has made into a national brand. Yet in Guyana its strategic focus appears to be motor vehicle sales and internal corporate restructuring rather than regional expansion. In that context, it is not without irony that when legal assistance was required, the company retained a Trinidad-based law firm. There is nothing improper in that choice. But it illustrates a broader reality: regional integration appears to flow more readily into Guyana than outward from it.
If President Ali wishes to be taken seriously when he calls on others to dismantle barriers, his actions must be consistent and must avoid enacting measures that privilege domestic production in ways that offend Treaty principles. One would have expected the tabling Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, to be particularly alert to Guyana’s binding obligations under the Treaty and the emphatic direction already given by the CCJ.
If President Ali genuinely believes in the Single Market, then he should be speaking frankly to Guyanese businesses, charging them to go out and exploit the opportunities offered by the CSME, diversifying their markets and earning foreign currency. Not sheltering them from regional competition, but equipping them to compete successfully within it.
The National ATM at GuySuCo
Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
For nearly three decades, save for the five-year interval between 2015 and 2020, the PPP/C has exercised political stewardship over the State-owned GuySuCo. The present Minister of Agriculture has held that portfolio since 2020. The condition of the sugar industry today is therefore not the product of temporary misfortune or inherited instability. It is the cumulative result of sustained political management. The current CEO is a member of the central committee of the party. The immediate past Chairman is now a minister in the 2025 PPP/C government. It is interesting to briefly review its record.
When the PPP/C assumed office in 1992, sugar production stood at 243,010 tonnes. By 2004, under a management contract, output exceeded 320,000 tonnes. That contract ended. Production fell. By 2015, output had declined to 212,000 tonnes. When the administration returned in 2020, production stood at 88,868 tonnes. In the years since, output has fluctuated between approximately 47,000 and 60,000 tonnes, with 47,000 tonnes repeating itself.
The financial record mirrors the operational decline. Between 2004 and 2019, GuySuCo received approximately $95.3 billion in capital allocations. From 2020 to 2025, a further $41.9 billion was committed. Cumulative exposure now stands at roughly $137.3 billion. This is not project support. It is spent capital, even as output contracted.
The explanation cannot lie solely in labour migration, adverse weather, or global sugar prices. Those are industry realities. What distinguishes GuySuCo is the repeated cycle of political misjudgment, and capital initiatives followed by interruption, reversal, or abandonment.
A Packaging Plant costing millions of US Dollars was established at Enmore at significant cost, later dismantled and stored for years. Mechanisation conversion on the Lower East Coast Demerara, costing tens of billions of dollars reportedly progressed substantially before being discontinued. Capital works were undertaken but did not mature into sustained productivity. Comparable initiatives are now proposed elsewhere. A new make of heavy-duty equipment was bought on the wing of hope only to end up in the scrap heap.
In a capital-intensive agricultural enterprise, continuity is indispensable. Capital without continuity does not become productivity. It becomes depreciation.
When major strategic initiatives do not survive their own implementation cycle, the difficulty lies not in rainfall or labour supply, but in policy- formulation, decision-making and execution. Successive chief executives have been introduced with confidence – as turnaround specialists, as industry experts, as reformers. Yet across leadership cycles, the trajectory has remained downward. Titles have changed. Output has changed – but in the wrong direction.
The Minister now projects 100,000 tonnes in 2026 and profitability by 2030. At the same time, the Corporation acknowledges yield per hectare below target, limited factory grinding hours, inefficiencies in cane transport, and recovery rates requiring improvement. To move from under 60,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes within two years requires simultaneous correction of every major structural weakness. The history of GuySuCo does not inspire confidence in such radical transformation.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Of the proposed $8.4 billion operational subsidy for 2026, approximately $6.8 billion is allocated to wages. With a wage bill reportedly near $20 billion, GuySuCo must generate roughly $13 billion in sales merely to complete payroll. That excludes capital replacement, factory rehabilitation, debt servicing, and statutory arrears, including significant arrears obligations to the National Insurance Scheme and other public bodies.
Even if the 100,000-tonne target were achieved, the revenue required per tonne simply to bridge wages would leave limited margin for genuine profitability.
If annual injections in the range of $10 – 15 billion continue through 2029, an additional $40 – $60 billion will be committed before the promised year of profitability arrives. Even assuming sustained net profit thereafter, recovery of those injections would take decades, disregarding the $137.3 billion already expended and ignoring the time value of money. There is no indication that the PPP/C cares that this is neither a financial nor an economic proposition.
While GuySuCo could soon cross the line of no return, the issue is only partly operational. The deeper issue is governance. When policy direction, operational management, and oversight operate within the same political structure, independent commercial scrutiny weakens. In any private enterprise, three decades of declining output accompanied by over $137 billion in capital allocations would trigger restructuring, external review, and clear accountability. Only political considerations sustain current and indefinite architecture.
Sugar is part of Guyana’s history and rural economy. It deserves serious policy, not perpetual experimentation. Support may be justified. Waste is not. Absent radical reform of governance – separating political control from commercial management, imposing independent oversight, and publishing transparent, costed transformation plans, projections of profitability by 2030 are not forecasts. They are wagers.
And the taxpayer is the one paying for this bet of folly.