WORKS are progressing towards the full operationalisation of Guyana’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) with the holding of a three-day workshop to educate members of its Public Accountability and Oversight Committee on their roles and expectations.

The workshop began on Wednesday at the Roraima Duke Lodge and was made possible through collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the University of Guyana (UG) and experts from Ghana.

The process to operationalise the fund includes the implementation of committees mandated by the legislation. These include the Macro-Investment Committee and the Public Oversight Committee (POC); the latter which 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. The government had planned to set up these committees ahead of ‘first oil’ but will now have to wait until after the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections before certain steps are realised.

“We don’t see them being set up before the elections because of the nature of their composition. But what we have been doing is working towards shortlisting people and we’ve been in touch with some outstanding, well-known people in the fields trying to short list them so that after elections we can be sure that they will come on board so that we don’t have to take a long time trying to establish the committee,” Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, told the newspaper.

Jordan said that further engagement with international experts is being undertaken by the Department of Energy, while the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is gearing up to conduct its audits.

The intention of the SWF – also called the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) – is to ensure that the revenue which comes from oil goes into that fund to be properly monitored. It also aims to ensure the stabilisation of the economy while ensuring that monetary resources are available through transparent methodologies in keeping with the Santiago Principles. The guiding purpose of these principles is to have in place a transparent and sound governance structure that provides for adequate operational controls, risk management and accountability; ensure compliance with applicable regulatory and disclosure requirements.