The account to receive oil revenue through the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) will be established next week at the Bank of Guyana.
This announcement was made by Guyana’s Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, during an interview at the opening of the Guyana International Petroleum Exhibition and Summit (GIPEX) on Wednesday.
“The account will be setup to receive the royalties. We should start next month. We are quite excited that we can finally setup the account,” he said.
Both the political opposition and the Private Sector Commission are still to submit names to sit on the macroeconomic committees of the fund, but Mr. Jordan said time is running out.
“We are not waiting to hear from them. I have already invited them…the oil is still being produced. We have to ensure that we get our portion of the oil, in the context of revenues and ultimately, profits, safely secured in the account, until it is ready to be activated,” he stated.
Jordan said too, “The monies will sit in the account until we are able to establish all the committees, after the elections and then the committees will take charge of investing the monies.”
Director of Guyana’s Department of Energy, Dr. Mark Bynoe, recently told residents of Lethem, Region Nine that Guyana is expected to earn an estimated 300 million US dollars in 2020, when commercial oil and gas production begins.
Speaking to reporters in early September, Jordan had indicated that the Government will be restricted from spending the monies placed in the NRF until after general elections.
However, he does not foresee this having a major impact on its usual work programme.
