Cabinet to receive first ever medium-term debt report for approval

The first of its kind, medium- term debt report has been prepared by the Ministry of Finance and will be presented to the cabinet today.

This was announced yesterday during a press conference by Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, who noted that the report looks at the last five years up to 2015.

“I hope when it becomes well circulated it will put (to rest) a number of these irrational arguments about the debt being bandied about,” the minister said.

The minister raised objections to what he described as erroneous reports carried in the daily newspapers regarding the Government’s debt.

Specific mention was made to a letter by one Sase Singh, which carried the headline “APNU/AFC Gov’t defaults on $20B debt in 2015” and published in the Guyana Times, October 17, 2016.

The minister said the headline is damaging, irresponsible and unmitigated, hence he called on the media to be factual in its reportage of issues, particularly those financial in nature, since according to him they may not be familiar with certain terminologies and other techniques being used by experts in the finance and economics fields.

Minister Jordan clarified that the Coalition Government has not defaulted on any of its debt payments, except for those under the Paris Club Agreement, which were inherited from the previous administration, noting that debt write-offs less than 96 percent cannot be accepted.