Oil Talk with OGGN Guyana

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Guyana in 1967.

[00:00:02]He's associate he was associated with the Jesuits in connection with research for higher studies. Mike then returned between 1970 and 1972 during which time he taught at the University of Guyana UG. He played rugby for Guyana.

[00:00:21]Between 1972 and 1976, Mike was director of Oxfam's development programs in the Andian region. He was based in Lima and Oxom is an international NGO.

[00:00:33]In 1976, Mike returned to Guyana. He was an original founder of the Guyana Human Rights Association, GH.

[00:00:43]And Mike has been engaged in human rights activism ever since.

[00:00:48]I just want to say a little give you a small introduction to the listener to the OGN, the oil and gas governance network. This was founded in the summer of 2017.

[00:01:01]OGN is composed of Gion at home and abroad. It's a registered 501c3 nonprofit NGO in New York. OGN recognizes that oil will feature prominently in Guyana's future for decades to come. And that is why OGN is committed to thinking long term. OGN's mission is to advocate for the rule of law for environmental protection and strict financial norms when it comes to oil exploration and production in Guyana. Whether you're listening locally or you are one of the many gy living in the diaspora, our hope is that we can keep you informed about events connect connected with governance and oil oil and gas in Guyana.

[00:01:54]OGN is independent and we actively advocate for transparency, accountability and good governance.

[00:02:02]Okay, so now to our guest Mike. We've been hearing some acronyms for quite a long time. LCDS for example, the lowcarbon development strategy is one that I think most gy are familiar with.

[00:02:16]But today we would like to explore with you another acronym EITI, the extractive industries transparency initiative.

[00:02:26]First I'd like to ask you about EITI internationally. What is its purpose?

[00:02:32]When was it created? who belongs to EITI and how does it function?

[00:02:39]>> Well, thank you Jan and thank you to OGN for the invitation to this um interview.

[00:02:49]I much appreciate it. Before I get to your just before responding to your question, I should point out that while I was one, I was only one of a number of the founders of the GH.

[00:03:06]Um, it wasn't I founded it by any means, but that was just a a little clarification.

[00:03:14]Um with respect to EITI um its origins go back to the 1990s when there was a growing concern particularly in the it's was in the developed nations where the concern was being expressed but it was largely about what was going on in some of the least known countries in the world with respect to the extra active industries and it was people like George Soros and the revenue institute and Tony Blair and publish what you pay in the UK, people and organizations of that nature who were raising concerns which eventually um gelled into uh a conference in London and in the early 2000s. I think it's about 2003 uh of about five separate countries and Trinidad and Tobago being among them and they came to create they didn't actually create EITI but they created what was the forerunner to EITI. This sounds a bit complicated and messy but that is actually the origins and the continuence of EITI organizationally um seemed more complicated but we'll get back to that later on. So it was in that period that um issues relating to oil exploration in Angola and Azabai Jan and Ghana and a number of the lesserknown countries in the world. This the ITI wasn't uh simply the product of developed countries. It was the way developed countries were functioning in other parts of the world which eventually led to this um peculiar uh attempt to address uh and issues that involved governments and they involved businesses and the consequences were felt by ordinary people. So Guyana became a member of this rather we >> Mike before we get to Guyana.

[00:05:51]>> Oh sorry.

[00:05:51]>> Yes. Um how does the ITI function internationally?

[00:05:55]>> It functioned internationally by and it evolved into this but what it is now that three uh sectors the extractive sector the government and the uh civil society.

[00:06:14]uh formed this sort of collective governance um organization uh governance just to be since I'll be using that word a lot I I need to explain the manner in which I'm using it and we choose here I mean governments comprise uh parliament or some kind of assembly that sets policy you then and That's the the the political administration. You then have the civil service or its equivalent that implements policy and the laws that are passed by government.

[00:07:00]But it's very clear that those two are not enough. And frequently problems arise that require solutions that are cobbled together and by civil society, by business, by joint initiatives.

[00:07:21]And this is what I the the it's that kind of activity that is captured by the way EITI functions that the administrative structures of the in in in the extra industries like in our case in Guyana GGMC and the ministry >> of geology and minds commission.

[00:07:48]>> Sorry that's correct. I I I shall tell they are the official agencies responsible for uh extraction but they are for various reasons um very deficient. We can come back to that. At the moment we're looking at the fact that um the origins of publish what you pay were uh prompted by the limitations of the existing government structures and we're using the term governance here to cover a range of initiatives taken by uh different aspects of the society. not the elected representatives who have been unable to address this.

[00:08:42]>> Thanks Mike. So helpful the the very helpful. So globally EITI where is it headquartered and what is its role visav member countries.

[00:08:54]>> Okay. Um the ITI now has 58 I 58 maybe 59 16 by now member countries and it's the country that opts to become a member and within the country the EITI structure comprises the three sectors I mentioned the government has a part the the business have a part and EIT and civic have a part and they all have equal voice and I I would say votes but in fact voting is very rare. The whole thrust of EITI is to find a compromise solution to crises which the existing laws and administration are not capable of addressing. In other words, EITI works best in crisis and it's as a response to u problems which are for a variety of reasons we can discuss not being addressed by the formal government structure and uh internationally there is a similar board international board that again comprises the three sectors. The uh member countries, the civic sector for example in each of the member countries elects an international civic component and business do the same and governments do the same. And so you get what ostensibly are very unwieldy uh boards both nationally and internationally.

[00:10:52]But as we can see as we discuss here it it it is effective and it can be uh a solution to many more areas in our view.

[00:11:05]I don't know if that's >> Mike that's great and I think um just to say where does the secretariat of the global EITI where is that headquartered >> that is located in Norway and um yes there's the executive secretariat and then there's the international board >> and it's the secretariat that each national secret should say in each societ in each country where there's membership they try to have a national secretariat and so they relate to the international secretariat.

[00:11:41]>> That's excellent Mike. Thank you so much for that introduction to the global extractive industry transparency initiative EITI and we you mentioned that there are 59 countries perhaps which are members of EITI and Guyana is one GITI.

[00:12:00]Can you say a bit about when gyi was created? You mentioned the three components but and any uh any uh additional information on on those components would be fascinating for our listeners.

[00:12:15]>> Um generally speaking not we're not in Guyana yet we're talking >> we are in Guyana now.

[00:12:21]>> Oh we're in Guyana now? Yes. Okay.

[00:12:23]>> All right. Well >> go ahead. as in most of the other places where uh EITI has uh developed the and one of the impulses to create it is a lack of trust in both governments and companies capacity to address in our case the very serious issues generated in the extra ractive sector primarily in the areas of gold mining and in the oil and gas uh sector.

[00:13:05]And so um we uh here have a a business grouping for example in the EITI that largely comprises representative from the oil companies and from the gold companies and uh in theory forestry but it forestry doesn't always has doesn't hasn't always had a representative on it And those are selected by the business grouping itself. So their representatives and and whoever they choose. And here for example in Guyana the oil and gas people have one of four each sector in Guyana has four members elected by the sector itself. And within the business community, the one of those sectors is always comes from oil and gas and one always comes from the gold mining. Uh sometimes fisheries uh is represented but not always and it uh it depends on how the business community wants to who it wants to elect. And so that's the business sector. Um we can come back to how the civic sector is uh selected because there are some unusual features to that and the government for its part chooses four of its um members in in the over the last um few years. uh GR has been represented that's a revenue authority um the the golden uh no Gyana geology and mines have h had a representative and um the ministry of finance is represented and and the government chooses again people that it wants to have on uh they heavily represent the finance and extracted uh areas of government.

[00:15:28]>> That's fascinating, Mike. So the four representatives from government, four from industry, four from civil society together, these make up what you call the multistakeholder group, the MSG.

[00:15:41]>> That's correct.

[00:15:43]And the multistakeholder group is the authority of EITI.

[00:15:52]It's not the government or the ministry of natural resources or ministry of finance and so on. It's these elected representatives in the multistakeholder group that is responsible for all major decisions.

[00:16:12]We in here in Guyana are recognizing the fact that the agencies which come together to comprise the MSG have very different opinions on uh and interpretations of what is taking place in the extractive sector in Guyana. And so if we want to move forward and agree on decisions, we have to be very conscious of that fact. And what it means is that any decision that we would like for example civic wants to see passed by the MSG has to be you have to approach that in a way of asking well what do the other two what would they agree to and what do they get out of this and the whole idea of The EITI is not that you can capture it and get it fully behind you. It's always a compromise.

[00:17:24]Everybody needs to get something of a win out of each decision.

[00:17:31]>> Exactly.

[00:17:32]>> It's a big challenge. Initially we thought this is going to be hard to do because you have strong opinions on on the business side the business companies largely focus on substance.

[00:17:48]civic tend to be more concerned about process >> and so you got to work through that a difference of approaches and it's we can talk about how successfully that might have been done in since 2016 when we first came into existence.

[00:18:11]>> Thank you Mike. So um you mentioned at the beginning the the the genesis of EITI globally was through a recognition of the lack of trust among these uh players in natural in extractive industries in civil society and so I can well imagine you know that coming to a position of consensus and building a good relationship takes time and that's what as you explained the MSG aim seems to do one other um sort of admin question when you look at the or when uh someone goes to look at one of the annual reports of the EITI of GYITI it's produced by a separate entity I think one was called the BDO can you explain what that the role of BDO or the prep the the the entity that produces the annual report how is that hired >> right Uh just before we get to that a final comment on the approaches to EITI.

[00:19:20]Um it's important EITI works well when everybody has something to gain by being part of the agreement and lots to lose by not being part of it. So this concept of uh collective decision making and consensus is is key. I think we've had one vote since 2016.

[00:19:54]>> Uh the international committee of EITI has never had a vote. They've always stuck with uh trying to find something that everyone can buy into. It's not what everybody It's not what anybody really wants, but there's enough in it to make a it worthwhile to go along with the decision making. That's the kind of approach we have here. Now, what does the ITI do? The main purpose of EITI is to get more transparency on the financial flows within the extractive sector. In other words, how much money do the companies make and how much money do the companies pay the government. So in other words um in the course of a year uh EITI will produce a report which reflects the flow of finances from the sectors the extractive sectors to the government.

[00:21:11]You're talking their taxes, duties, royalties, all all the different forms in which um there are financial flows into the government and from the government agencies, Ministry of Finance, GGMC, um Ghana Revenue Authority and so on. uh niceil um how much money did they take in and how much money go and so that the goal is to produce a report that has reliable information of that nature in order to strengthen the credibility of the report every year one of the important decisions taken by the MSG is who will produce this report and a firm a reputable international auditing firm has been selected each year to undertake this job.

[00:22:19]There's a the biggest uh auditing firm in the world. Um originally >> Deote Deote and Touch is it deote?

[00:22:30]>> No. No. BDO is I'm not sure what the BDO uh stands for. U prior to being called BDO it the organization had another name. So they are hired and they move in they bring a team of people and they first of all identify what percentage of the monies uh can you realistically try to um cover in the course of years.

[00:23:06]So the first thing that happens is it's established how are all the for example all the gold mining companies you could say that had revenues over um 30 $40 million if that captures 95% of the revenue that thing it gets cut off there. So it's not every company in mining and every miner that has a license that is expected to provide his information. It's only those companies.

[00:23:48]Then usually you're talking about maybe 20 or max 30 of companies. If you take all them together, you get 90 95% of the industry is covered. Yeah.

[00:24:02]>> So you identify first of all what the cutoff point will be and then the company that's being hired will get in touch with them. They do workshops with them as to the way in which information should be presented and what kind of information they're interested in. And similarly with the government ministries um they also uh produce the information.

[00:24:33]it comes in to the uh agency that's been hired and they in collaboration with the MSG um work through this and produce different uh drafts of the reports and eventually a final report that the MSG must agree with. The technical agency produces the best report to their ability, but it's the MSG that have to approve it.

[00:25:09]>> Thanks.

[00:25:10]>> It's not the Ministry of Finance. It's not the government's report. It's this independent bodies.

[00:25:16]>> It's the independent multistakeholder group.

[00:25:18]>> So Mike, you've laid out a very admirable process of governance process for us. And I'm thinking about the Guyana we live in now where there've been three parliamentary sessions only since um for the for this year or maybe since the um since since a new government was sworn in where there's no fixed parliamentary timetable. Quite astonishing. Does uh the MSG have a fixed timetable or how does it work in practice?

[00:25:51]How are meetings organized? So they fix >> um there is a monthly meeting >> um which when we first started in the MSG used to always be an in-person meeting.

[00:26:09]Um, after the pandemic, they've all been Zoom meetings and there's been a notable lowering of the quality of the work of the MSG because we're not just dealing with data. You're dealing with values with strongly held opinions and the personal interaction of the three sectors and managing that effectively um is very important part of this this being a successful venture and the idea of um the trust um I've mentioned earlier the idea of the companies only being concerned with not only largely concerned with substance and uh civic with uh process is uh has been manifest in the fact that we don't actually meet now And my one of my recommendations would be or has been that we have to get back to in-person meetings or some way in which the three sectors uh actually interact and uh try and create this consensus that I've been mentioning.

[00:27:54]>> Yes, I completely agree Mike. Uh I was reading a couple of days ago the after the Carter Center released its report on the 2025 elections. Want to give a shout out to the Carter Center. They mentioned that in 2016 and for a year they supported Guyana as as it prepared its candidacy for membership of the Ga of the EITI it's its country candidacy and which was received in um formally in October I think of 2017. So another thank you to the Carter Center for that role that it played. Uh Mike, can we shift over to talking about policy forum Guyana? Another acronym uh PFG. Can you tell us a little bit about PFG and its role in the GEITIA?

[00:28:46]>> Right. Yes. This is important that people understand this. when Guyana first decided to become a member country and uh that was in 2016.

[00:29:00]Guyana had had contact with the EITI prior to that. the previous government.

[00:29:08]In fact, since about 2011, there had been visits from EITI and the government representatives would go to meetings with EITI, but there was no evidence of it actually taking form in terms of a government section, rather a Guyana, a section of EITI, and no moves were made to actually joined but the coalition government decided that we should take this farther and become a member and the then minister of natural resources um >> Trotman Mr. Rafael Trotman.

[00:29:55]>> That's right. Thank you. Um Rafael Trotman got in touch initially with the Ghana Human Rights Association and asked would we be willing to um address the issue of how civic components of MSG should be created.

[00:30:16]Well, the GH thanked him for the confidence in the association, but suggested that rather than we do it, we were quite prepared to do it, but we thought that the policy forum Guyana, which was a coalition of agencies that included indigenous women, disabilities, human rights, uh was a broaderbased civic body and that should be reflected in the choice of the uh MSG civic. Uh so Minister Troutman was quite happy with that and so he then wrote and appointed uh PFG.

[00:31:05]What PFG did in terms of the selection when we got round to selecting the first civic component was appoint a committee that was major general retired Joe Singh um the former elections commissioner Rudy Collins and the lady Sandra uh can't recall Sandra's she was the human resources specialist and we asked those three to actually do the selection. We widely advertised the idea of EITI and what being a member of civic would entail. And we asked that individuals apply in their own capacity, personal capacity, but that part of the application had to indicate what their contribution to civil society had been.

[00:32:12]>> Had they been members of civil society organizations, had they worked and sponsored civil society work and so on.

[00:32:20]So there was a combination of the individual was uh applying but the application had to show solid uh work with civil society.

[00:32:35]The three members committee then recommended to EITI who the four members the of the applicants they thought best suited the purpose of EITI.

[00:32:51]And so in addition to the four members, the four alternates were also identified so that each member had someone who if he or she were unable to attend a meeting or then the alternate would step in. In fact, in order that alternates understood what they were getting involved with, they were also allowed to attend meetings. They didn't have a vote but they had a voice. So that then was a three-yearly process which the ITI has done on three occasions repeated a process of that nature. The individual um PE person selected have differed uh from the original three. they I think may have done too but people of equal uh background you know well known well respected by uh a range of the society they are the ones who have been elected have been the selectors of EITI's civic component >> so Mike that you've laid out a really admirable process democratic and building trust to get the civic members of the MSG selected. Um, and you played that role or PFG played that role until what year?

[00:34:28]>> From 2017 until when?

[00:34:30]>> Until last year?

[00:34:31]>> Until >> January 2025.

[00:34:35]Um, was the last time the PFG um implemented that process? And the process was always implemented in conjunction with the Ministry of Natural Resources because the newspaper advertisements were paid for through the office of the permanent secretary. And so while we did the work, the ministry was involved. We submitted that list in April.

[00:35:10]It started in January but with the first of all advertising then people submitting their application and then organizing interviews with the committee and then the se final selection process. It took until the beginning of April when we submitted our list to the permanent secretary of the ministry of natural resources as had happened from the beginning.

[00:35:43]Um there is a crisis at the moment in the EITI. Should we go into that now? J >> I think we should leave that crisis for a bit. I I think for our general listeners we can um up until January of 2025 this you've described an admirable process in fact of building trust between the civic group and the ministry and the industrial group. So I would like to um dig a little deeper delve a little deeper into an example of a sector that's tracked by that was and is being tracked by Ge EITI and let's just take mining for example. You mentioned gold mining. So which agencies or agency has to furnish reports and data to BDO as it prepares its an GITI annual report? Which which which sectors of in mining? Well um virtually all three sectors in the sense that they have the information from the individual companies that is the basis of the data that goes into the reports.

[00:36:57]The Gold and Diamond Miners Association as a corporate body is the the agency responsible for selecting the gold representatives on the MSG and they interact with the um international administrator as they're called. That's the company that's hired to do the work. Um and then also there are uh other agencies that have concerns related to mining. Uh and those concerns are not simply the the financial value of the the money but also the environmental impact and the gender impact of mining is now a requirement for reports as established by the international board.

[00:38:00]And the those recommendations are embodied in what's known as the international standard. That's like the constitution of EITI overall. And it's renovated periodically to incorporate uh changes which are taking place. And now for example the environmental dimension of that report addresses issues such as the impact of mercury, the import and export of mercury from Guyana, >> um the impact on indigenous communities uh both in the domestic life but also the impact of mining on communities.

[00:38:50]So um those there are variety of sources um which influence eventual recommendations with respect to gold mining. So really um so you mentioned at the beginning of this talk Mike that maybe the companies which uh comprise the lion share of importance in terms of volume or value which are then tracked by EITI. So when the when these companies submit their data let's say gold mining companies is there triangulation is there anyone who checks to as to the accuracy of their those submissions >> GDMC also submits its information to the uh international administrators.

[00:39:42]Um, the annexes to the report run to thousands of pages and they contain the all the licensing information that not only is the new licensing for the particular year but also the licenses which are still extends which are still valid that were approved some years earlier. So you have a very clear uh indication of how many licenses any particular individual owns.

[00:40:22]the largest group of miners in the largest uh mining activity in Guyana involving gy are what are known as mediumcale mining and these are mining operations on up to uh 1,200 acres acres >> of land.

[00:40:55]So that um each uh report and the annexes contain the details of every license medium scale or even small scale but small scale are dealt with differently um that extend so that it's clear that some miners have hundreds of licenses. Others have less. But one feature of mediumscale mining which is of enormous concern is the way in which what ought to be declared to be a largecale mine that is any mining area beyond 1,200 acres.

[00:41:49]uh the manner in which miners are allowed to circumvent all of the charges which should apply to large scale minds are broken down in the following way that if for example in the cailluni a minor uh is taking possession of say a area of 12,000 acres.

[00:42:22]Rather than one license being issued on a particular date for a certain amount of money, you will find that maybe 13 licenses in the same area with the same uh coordinates in terms of its location in Cailluni, which clearly indicates that all of these 12 or 13 licenses are contiguous. They constitute one large area but for licensing purposes that area is broken down and identified as 12 or 13 medium scale licenses which all hover below 1,200 acres. All of this information is published by in the annexes of the report.

[00:43:19]Initially the government was taken aback at the manner in which all this was done because then people who were uh sufficiently uh uh able with respect to um manipulating the the uh information could produce all of this information.

[00:43:48]somewhat in the manner I'm describing to you that it's much easier to see who all the owners are, how many uh licenses any particular owner has and this business of the mediumcale mining.

[00:44:04]Uh the way now that the government or the ministry is addressing this problem of uh which is embarrassing uh because it imp implicates people from within the ministry. It would not be possible to buy licenses in this manner without some level of a cooperation and oversight from within the min the GGMC itself.

[00:44:37]And so one way of both allowing the information to go out but then making it very difficult for people to see it is the way in which accessing the annexes has been made very difficult. You have to be quite skilled in computer ski particularly in Excel techniques to access all of that information. I don't know if this is helpful.

[00:45:11]>> Well, I think it's really helpful because again I think in the news recently or in Guyana we hear about the way public procurement is um managed. So the breaking up of contracts to be under the 15 million ceiling uh in a way to give multiple contracts to favored FFF family, friends and favorites of a particular uh political entity. Um Mike I there was a letter in uh Kiteure News on 14th of May uh which it said and I'll just read it more talking about EITI.

[00:45:50]More troubling are the reported alterations to previously published data sets columns removed including critical fields such as data granted for concessions. These are not cosmetic edits. They strike at the integrity of the record. Such actions if verified suggest that routine suggests not routine data management but deliberate sanitization.

[00:46:15]Now, if this allegation were correct, I haven't checked it, who would inform EITI globally and locally, GYITI, what might be the consequences of um tampering with data?

[00:46:30]>> Uh I think the international secretariat would say Guyana has got to work that out for itself. that there's the the idea for example that if those allegations are correct that EITI internationally will somehow repudiate the report or um criticize Guyana is would be misreading the relationship between the local uh operation and the international movement. the we need I it goes to the heart of how disinformation and uh not only the information that EIT handles but information generally in Guyana uh is managed that if there the business community are benefiting from it they're not going to come forward >> and criticize it. Um if other a sectors um feel as they do that there's something going badly wrong in oil and gas in terms of the austerity that people are experiencing in the midst of these enormous uh gains that Guyana is making. Uh the question is how do you actually address that?

[00:48:12]>> Yeah. Um there's a sense in which if EITI were more vigorous that EITI uh could ensure that people who or organizations which are concerned with that uh are having a voice and bring them together with uh in this collective governance mode rather RA than formally.

[00:48:45]Uh if if in fact the government ministries themselves are impervious or um uh protected from being challenged directly.

[00:49:07]But at the moment um my sense is um multistakeholder type approaches where organizations have a concern about what's going on but it's not the same concern and they don't share a lot other than what may be a specific concern. For example, you you could almost create a multistakeholder committee around the way licenses are issued or the way the natural resources fund is looted.

[00:49:46]There are some people that would overlook the fact that the monies in the natural resources fund are being used far more liberally than was ever intended. liberally by this generation and this government. That was intended by the creation of that fund. And the solution to that in my view would be to formally engage a range of people in I mean we're calling it a multistakeholder committee within the statute of natural resources fund. There is a civic committee that's supposed to be an oversight committee, but it's selected largely by people who are associated or unwilling to challenge the government.

[00:50:40]>> So it doesn't function.

[00:50:42]>> But it's a example of this collective governance.

[00:50:47]>> Yeah. that we need to spend more time encouraging and working on so that the official uh ministerial and legal positions that are not being implemented can be challenged.

[00:51:04]>> So Mike, thank you for having pivoted to the natural resources fund which is uh in you know the name other other countries call it a sovereign wealth fund. We heard last week from Christopher Rammitz called in Norway their national pensions fund so all citizens pay attention to it. Can you explain the difference to our listeners the difference between income taxes which gy workers pay each year versus the petroleum royalties which are paid into the natural resources fund.

[00:51:37]The natural resources fund comprises money that has been earned by selling the natural properties and uh mineral properties that belong communally to all gines.

[00:52:02]There are there's private wealth that you earn by uh your work and different ways in which we we earn money and then uh the government takes part of that in taxes for the provision of services that we all supposed to benefit from.

[00:52:25]Um the natural resources fund already belongs not only to it doesn't actually belong even to this generation. This generation is the protector >> of and the custodian of inherited wealth that has been passed on from generation to generation and the future generations have every right to expect it will be handed on to them. The only justification for selling inherited wealth is that the full value of the asset is handed on instead of the asset itself. In other words, if you're going to sell oil, then all the money you earn from oil should go into the natural resources fund. The Ghana government currently would say that's fine, we do that. We put it all in the fund.

[00:53:35]But what they stop short of is they do not accept that the that prevents them from simply accessing the fund. They've now legally granted themselves the right to 95% of the first uh billion dollars that goes in every year. and 90% of the second billion that goes in every year and they've virtually repossessed it as a government uh thing the way they do taxes.

[00:54:08]>> Yeah.

[00:54:09]>> The >> Sorry, go ahead.

[00:54:11]>> The handing out of money as cash grants here is a weak way of what for example happens in Alaska. In Alaska, 30% of the sovereign fund in Alaska is handed out to every Alaskan gets a check in January. And that check is a a nominal way of recognizing that the money belongs to them. And every Alaskan now can anticipate he can improve his house or they can go on a uh a trip somewhere or they can do something special with that money and it's acknowledged that belongs to them. It's not the government suddenly deciding they'll be generous and scatter 100,000 around whether you need it or not. And if you are receiving it as a h 100,000 but you already earn far more than 100,000 then that money should be taxed back but there's no evidence that it is.

[00:55:27]So the concept of uh intergenerational wealth is not acknowledged here. In fact, it as in happens in Norway, the money that goes into the fund should be reinvested and the interest that those new investments make go into the fund and they belong to this generation.

[00:55:58]>> Yeah. It's like if I uh inherits a farm from my forefathers, I can use the farm for my own benefits.

[00:56:08]Anything I grow on the farm belongs to me.

[00:56:12]>> Yes.

[00:56:12]>> But then the farm gets handed on to my children or the next generation.

[00:56:20]>> Yes.

[00:56:20]>> And that's uh applied to the fund as well. If the fund were invested then the government would have some justification in the way it approaches the interest.

[00:56:36]>> But at the moment we don't even invest the fund. We leave it in the bank account in New York. So it's readily available for the government to write a check anytime it wants.

[00:56:47]>> Yeah.

[00:56:47]>> The central not just to finish this. The central bank is supposed to be the over body that oversightes the way the natural resources fund functions. We have never seen any reference in any of the banks reports to anything other than the input of each lift of oil >> and how much it generates. There is no reference by the bank to what happens to the money that's supposedly used to pay the taxes of the oil companies because that's the natural the the bank ought to be showing that as something as another outflow from the uh fund not just the money the government takes to support the budget. So right Mark Mike in the last we have only a few minutes left and that you've brought up a really important point which I think has consumed many as you mentioned Gian who are living through a period of immense deprivation and austerity you know very uh the cost of living is astronomical fairly high so we've heard from recently from accountant Christopher Ram from the economist Kenri Kant that between 2020 and 2024 Four, the taxes which should have been paid by the oil companies just like you and I pay taxes amounted to more than 5 billion Guyana dollars.

[00:58:23]The quarterly reports of the natural resources fund do not show whether those taxes are paid by government on behalf of the consortium headed by Exxon. So are these taxes which are paid in lee are they reported to geiti by the ministry of finance or by the ministry of natural resources?

[00:58:45]It's a good question that Janet because it one we raised at the the end of 2025 uh because it was clear that the Gander Revenue Authority was not at all comfortable with whatever the manner in which this issue was being resolved.

[00:59:09]It actually led to a delay in the publishing of the report because while it was not discussed in the terms we're discussing it, it was clear that there was something going on in that the uh end revenue were resisting something that the government was trying to force on them. We still don't know how it's been resolved and uh it's an issue that is and I mean we recently saw that the companies are earning more than the government's earning.

[00:59:50]>> Yeah. So >> and yet the government's paying their taxes.

[00:59:55]>> Yeah. And those taxes are not available to uh for the benefits of gy in Guyana.

[01:00:00]So our guest tonight this evening was Mr. Mike McCormack of Policy Forum Guyana. Mike, thank you for uh explaining to us um how EITI functions internationally, how GY GITI, the Guyana the Guyana branch or um