Guyana has built up sufficient savings in its Natural Resource Fund (NRF) to pay off the country’s entire external debt, says Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh.
Appearing on the Starting Point Podcast, Singh said if the government chooses to do so, there would still be change left over. The minister, however, signalled that having the capacity to retire external debt does not automatically mean the government will move to wipe out borrowing immediately.
He cautioned against the idea that debt is inherently negative, arguing that what matters is whether the country borrows within its means and for productive purposes.
“Does that mean that we will do that? Not necessarily, because we need to dispense with this notion that borrowing is somehow bad,” Singh said, comparing sovereign borrowing to how households and businesses typically finance homes and expansion.
Singh placed the claim within a longer debt-management narrative, saying Guyana moved from a near-insolvent position in the early 1990s to one of the lowest debt burdens in the region.
He said Guyana’s debt-to-GDP ratio once exceeded 600%, before falling to about 37% by 2014 “without a drop of oil being produced,” and is now “in the vicinity of about 24%,” which he described as among the lowest internationally.
