GUYANA’S Natural Resource Fund (NRF) will be operationalised well in advance of ‘first oil’ in 2020, as the Ministry of Finance is in the process of engaging international experts to assist in this regard.

Plans are in the pipeline for this assistance to come from Ghana and from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This was an update provided by Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, on Tuesday.

In an earlier interview with the Guyana Chronicle in March, the Minister had indicated that the process to operationalise the Fund was to implement the Act and set up the committees mandated by the legislation. These include the Macro-Investment Committee and the Public Oversight Committee (POC); the latter will examine proposals to manage the fund’s resources. The POC is slated to be the largest body with 22 members, representing a wide cross-section of society including individuals representing the interest of women, civil society, trade unions and youths.

“We are trying to get an expert out of Ghana who serves on a similar committee, the Public Interest Committee,” Jordan explained.
“…some of the representatives on that committee [to be formed in Guyana] would pose some problems in terms of who would be the nominee for youth, for women, for civil society. There’s no particular women’s group or youth group that you can point to so they have to get maybe some examples of how Ghana did theirs.”

Letters are still being sent to various groups which would be represented on the committee, inviting them to have sensitisation sessions at a future date. The Finance Minister stated that once the Ghanaian expert/s arrive, the government will seek to host a major workshop, perhaps in September 2019, which would see the attendance of all requisite stakeholders.

Earlier in May, the Ministry of Finance met with private sector and the Guyana Bankers Association to collect input from involved parties and inform them of a timetable for operationalistion. While the Opposition was also invited to the meeting, Jordan relayed that they were a no-show. Nonetheless, he stated: “We will continue unabated where this is concerned. As you can see, in the concluding statement [of the International Monetary Fund] we were given kudos for passing the legislation [and] for the strength of the legislation that we have passed and believe that it will stand the test of time and we should have that legislation operationalised well in advance of first oil,” he said.

Added to this, Jordan told the newspaper that Deputy Division Chief in the Caribbean division at the IMF, Arnold McIntyre, who recently visited Guyana had offered to bring an expert to the country or come himself to assist with education in this regard. “We’re thinking even of broadening the participation to other sectors so we have one grand meeting that can have the benefit of the expertise from Ghana and the International Fund,” Jordan said.

This weekend, Jordan will be heading off to Malta for a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) meeting hosted by the Commonwealth where he will seek out further assistance to operationalise Guyana’s NRF.

In addition, three technical officers from the Ministry will be heading to London this weekend for a workshop on Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) They will also be speaking with the Commonwealth Secretariat for additional assistance. The Act governing Guyana’s NRF was assented to on January 23, 2019 by President David Granger and will aid significantly in managing the country’s natural resource wealth.