Guyana and the Wider World

Introduction When I commenced, five weeks ago, this series of columns dedicated to newly-elected President Trump’s new Energy Policy; I had not anticipated the timing of the Trump’s Tariff Proclamation and its Annexes, which the Administration put in place and its wild aftershocks.

Introduction Today’s column is the fourth successive one, in a series devoted to the topic of the Trump Administration’s New US Energy Policy and what this portends for Guyana’s oil and gas industry, going forward.

Introduction Thus far, in my somewhat lengthy presentation of the Trump Administration’s voluminous Executive Orders on oil and gas, I have cited, verbatim, a random sample of these Orders.

Introduction As indicated in last week’s column I’ll continue today with the presentation of my random selection of President Trump’s executive orders, and then proceed to evaluate several of the various motifs driving these Executive orders; and, as space permits, move on to consider their probable long run  impacts on Guyana’s oil and gas sector.

During the first quarter of this year, [Q1, 2025], I have sought to situate Guyana’s oil and   gas sector in two general contexts in order to enrich our insight into its underlying dynamics.

Introduction The main purpose of this week’s column on the Guyana National Budget 2025 and the  oil and gas sector is two-fold; first, to bring discussion of the National Resource Fund, NRF, to a close, and second, to address the latest output data on Guyana crude oil.

Introduction This week’s column focuses on the microeconomic features [the operations and behaviour of economic agents, entities and businesses], involved in Guyana’s crude oil production and export as reported in the 2025 National Budget. 

Introduction               Over the years since First Oil in 2019, I have been using the opportunity afforded by my annual national budget reviews to portray why I keep asserting that Guyana’s macro-economic and micro-economic foundations comfortably satisfy the standard definitional conditions  and/or prerequisites for a nation designated to be termed a Petrostate.

Introduction In this week’s column I shall follow my practice in recent years by reporting on the Guyana 2025 national budget in order to perform a considered evaluation of the state-of -play in Guyana’s oil and gas sector.

Introduction The primary focus of today’s column is to provide, as promised last week, a few key details on the 12 trends/megatrends as identified by Start/Us  Insights, which I  had listed last week, I begin  with some further update on  the  data source.

Introduction My Sunday column last week [February 2] ended a rather long-running discourse that was devoted in the main, towards macroeconomic management, fiscal reform and monetary policy in Guyana along with, inescapably, the management of its exchange rate system when it was already fabled, as a rapidly emerging Petrostate; indeed, termed by many [including the IMF] as the world’s fastest growing [GDP] Petrostate ever.

Introduction       Today’s column concludes my discussion of the required framework for macroeconomic policy management, monetary policy, exchange rate regime, and, as we noted last week, the linked role of fiscal reform for Guyana, now classed as the Americas’ fastest rising Petrostate.

Introduction        In today’s column I draw attention to the linked roles of fiscal policy reform to the broader and more comprehensive roles of overall macroeconomic policy management in Guyana.

Introduction As the title indicates in today’s column I shall explore the options raised thus far in regard to Guyana’s macroeconomic policy management framework, going forward over the medium-term to the long term.

Introduction My initial response to the query captured in the header of today’s Sunday column is to introduce a careful paraphrase of the official version of key macroeconomic performance data, as cited in the Ministry of Finance, M o F, mid-2024 Report.

Introduction The American saying, which originated in the early 1970s  postulates that: “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” comes to mind every time I have to ponder reflexively on Guyana’s present-day hodge- podge ensemble of exchange rate arrangements.

Introduction Today’s column wraps up my reflections on the fierce controversies over the price deflator, CPI that is applied to calculate the country’s real effective exchange rate, REER.

Introduction My previous column focused on two technical terms, rarely mentioned thus far in this column series on Guyana as a Petrostate; namely, the real effective exchange rate, REER, and the exchange rate regime, ERR.

Introduction As indicated at the outset of the present series of columns, outlined in my October 27 2024 column, starting today I engage the third of the five topics listed therein; namely, Guyana’s macroeconomy and the policies needed to promote, ensure, as well as sustain both internal and external balance.

Introduction This is a concluding or wrap-up column. It adopts an eclectic catch all approach to   the items covered but is devoted to the topic of petroleum resources and reserves, which was introduced to my Sunday Stabroek series four weeks ago.