Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh has described certain statements on the subject of the cost of Presidential travel, made recently by the leadership of the Alliance for Change, as ludicrous and deliberately designed to mislead the public.
The Minister was referring to a recent statement in which the Alliance for Change stated that presidential overseas travel over the past two years had cost the public treasury $1 billion. Minister Singh described this statement as totally absurd, and pointed out that simple arithmetic would reveal how impractical  is this assertion by the AFC.
The Minister of Finance pointed out that Government’s total expenditure on overseas travel is disclosed publicly in the national estimates and the public accounts, both of which are tabled in the National Assembly and available to all Members of Parliament. Even the most cursory examination of these documents would debunk the absurd claims being made by the AFC regarding the cost of Presidential travel, suggesting that the AFC leadership is either not capable of reading the national estimates and the public accounts, or that they wish to deliberately mislead the public.
Minister Singh went on to point out that any person who examines the national estimates or the public accounts would known that the cost of overseas travel by all Government officials, including the President, is met from a specific line in the budget that finances attendance at overseas conferences and official visits. Over the past three years, the average expenditure incurred by the entire Government in any one year on overseas travel has been $200 million. This amount would have met the cost of travel by the President, all Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and all Government officials at every level in all Ministries throughout the year.
Consequently, to suggest that the President alone spent $1 billion on overseas travel over the past two years indicates either that the AFC leadership has not been paying attention to information that the Government has been routinely tabling in Parliament, or that the AFC leadership is incapable of reading and interpreting these documents or, even more worryingly, that despite knowing better, the AFC leadership is intent on misleading the People of Guyana by deliberate misrepresentation, distortion, and fabrication.