Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Godfrey Statia, has been selected to attend the 5th Government Oil & Gas Fiscal Summit in the United Kingdom. It takes place from October 4 -5, 2018.
This was announced by Guyana’s Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, at Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Ministry of the Presidency.
He stated, “This two day summit is expected to bring hundreds of resource producing nations together to discuss strategies and challenges for maximizing fiscal oil and gas revenues and themes of fiscal stability.”
Guyana’s attendance at this summit is particularly important as the country has less than two years before first oil, to put all the necessary regulatory and financial frameworks in place to ensure a sustainable, transparent and accountable oil and gas sector.
GRA is among the agencies that are leading the process and it has already begun to set up specialized units within the agency to deal with oil and gas revenue management issues.
Additionally, Mr Harmon also disclosed that Cabinet has received two external loan agreements signed between the Government of Guyana and the International Development Association (IDA).
He said, “One of these include, an advanced agreement for 1.6 million US dollars that will provide financial support for the proposed Guyana oil and gas capacity building project.
This is also in keeping with the Government’s plan to strengthen its capacity to effectively manage the sector.
Mr Harmon explained that the other agreement is, “a financing credit arrangement for SDR (special drawing rights) of 24 million, four hundred thousand that will provide financing in support of the first programmatic, financial and fiscal stability development policy programme.”
As an emerging oil producing nation, he said, these agreements are necessary and could not have came at a more appropriate time as the country pushes to build strong financial systems ahead of ‘first oil’.
