…as 2025 Budget debate concludes; consideration of estimates starts today

The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government has promised to continue delivering on its commitments made to the Guyanese people – as it has done over the past four years in office.
This is according to Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance Dr Ashni Singh as he wrapped up the week-long debates on the 2025 Budget in the National Assembly on Thursday evening. Under the theme ‘A secure, prosperous and sustainable Guyana,’ the $1.382 trillion budget – the PPP/C Administration’s fifth national fiscal plan – was presented earlier this month to the House.
During his more than two-hour-long presentation, Dr Singh stated that contributions by the members of the APNU/AFC (A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change) Parliamentary Opposition during five-day debates, have highlighted the fact that they are specialized in pseudo-intellectualism, pretentiousness, and delusions of grandeur.
“Let APNU/AFC continue to promise, and in particular as they have always been doing, continue to promise things that they neither can nor intend to deliver. They haven’t changed and they haven’t learnt and I suspect, they’re not capable of learning… [So] they can continue. We, in the People’s Progressive Party, will continue to deliver to the Guyanese people, and Budget 2025 represents this latest installation in our continued delivery to the Guyanese people… We will execute Budget 2025, we will win the election later in 2025, and we will continue to deliver to the Guyanese people until 2030 and long beyond 2030,” the Finance Minister declared to resounding cheers and applause from his colleagues and in the presence of only a handful of Opposition MPs who remained after the majority of them had left.
Dr Singh was at the time responding to a list of proposals that the PNC-led APNU has put out, promising a sleuth of measures to Guyanese that they would roll out if they are elected to office at the upcoming General and Regional Elections slated for later this year in Guyana.
The proposals included increasing the threshold to $400,000; a monthly $100,000 cash grant to each household; another $100,000 cash grant to adult Guyanese, once or twice per year; over $25 billion investment in the University of Guyanese; water and electricity subsidies; 35 percent salary increase for public servants and $100,000 old age pension, among a host of others – all within their first year in office.
Estimating that these measures would cost roughly around $799 billion if implemented, Minister Singh called the opposition proposals “fictitious and fictional imaginary.”
“The whimsical and fanciful dream that they’ve been painting, the delusion that they’re living, the malarkey that they’re spinning – and mind you, they haven’t built a school yet… they haven’t built a single hospital yet… they haven’t sunk a single [water] well yet and they done spent nearly a trillion dollars [when] they haven’t even opened a single housing scheme yet or allocate a single house lot yet,” he noted.
According to the Finance Minister, the Opposition believes that they can spin any tale and Guyanese would be gullible to believe it and vote for them, without taking into consideration that their actions during their last term in office are still fresh in people’s minds.
He outlined that not only did the APNU/AFC fail to deliver the promises they made to the Guyanese people back in 2015 but also imposed undue hardships with a slew of new taxes and dismal economic policies. This is coupled with their attempts to trample on citizens’ rights when they sought to steal the March 2020 elections.
Dr Singh posited that the APNU/AFC has condemned themselves because they refused to acknowledge and accept their mistakes of the past.
“The PNC and its leadership are incapable of learning… You’re rigging elections in 1968 and 1973… and imagine, they come back now in 2020 and believe that they can pull off the same stunt… If a political party does not understand that you have to deliver services and results to people in order to persuade them to vote for them, then such a party has no regard for the will of the people because they don’t care how you vote,” the minister stressed.
Unlike the Coalition, the Finance Minister noted that after the PPP/C lost the 2015 elections, the party regrouped and put in the hard work to regain supporters’ trust, hence they were put back into office by the people in 2020.
According to Singh, the PPP/C Administration is proud of its achievements over the past five years.
“We have delivered. And we have delivered in advance of time, whether we look at the schools we built, whether we look at the hospitals we have built and are building… We have delivered. But we are not satisfied because we will continue to deliver and will continue to outperform every single commitment we’ve given, and in our next term in office we will continue to continue to deliver in every single sector,” Minister Singh declared.
Prior to the Finance Minister’s presentation, Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton had delivered contributions to debates, outlining his disapproval of the 2025 Budget and noting that the state funds could be otherwise spent on more productive measures.

During his hour-long presentation, Norton highlighted his party’s plans to the various sectors, including housing, security and agriculture.
Ironically, he detailed plans to enhance the sugar industry including increasing sugar production and effectively managing the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) as well as ensuring workers benefit from a liveable income.
It was the PNC-led APNU/AFC Coalition that downsized the sugar industry between 2016 and 2017, not only shutting down sugar estates across the country but also placing some seven thousand sugar workers on the breadline.
Moreover, the Opposition leader in recalling the PNC’s track record, had also stated that the party is proud of banning basic food items in Guyana. “We restricted items in 1970s and we are proud of it,” Norton, the PNC leader, asserted.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister, Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips, had highlighted the PPP/C Government’s accomplishments during the past four years in office, which spanned coastal and hinterland regions across the country.
Focusing his presentation on Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Upper Berbice) – a traditional stronghold of the PNC-led Opposition, PM Phillips noted that the PPP/C had invested 580 percent more in that region than the Coalition did during its five years.
These investments include billions on roads and bridges, small business grants, loans and training for small business entrepreneurs in Linden.
These will be compounded with the current construction of the US$35 million toll-free Wismar bridge, ongoing works on the Linden to Lethem Highway, the new stadium and scores of other projects throughout Region 10.
“These successes are underpinned by our government’s vision to ensure Guyana’s oil wealth benefits all citizens which is evident in robust infrastructure development, cash grant initiatives and monumental advancements in healthcare and education… Things are happening in Guyana, we are developing at a terrific rate. The people are seeing development, the people are feeling development, the people are discussing development and the people are saying they want five more years of development by the PPP/C,” the PM declared.