Guyana’s Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, disclosed on Monday that the country has collected around US$4.4M (G$900 million) in revenue for the first half of 2017 from oil and gas related activities.
Mr. Jordan was at the time responding to a question posed by OilNOW on what the total revenue collected based on withholding tax amounted to, from the oil & gas industry. This was at a press conference held at the Ministry of Finance, Georgetown, Guyana. “For activities connected to oil and gas, 900 million dollars was collected for the first half of 2017,” he said.
When asked if withholding tax was being collected prior to 2017 for oil and gas related activities, the Finance Minister said he could not immediately confirm this but believes the 900 million Guyana dollars represent the resolution of outstanding issues related to companies operating in the sector.
Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, had confirmed to OilNOW in a recent interview that the revenue stream from the oil and gas industry would stem from royalty, profit oil and withholding tax. The country will receive 2% royalty and 50% profit oil when production gets underway in 2020, which, based on the current market price per barrel for oil, amounts to almost one million us dollars per day from the first day of production.
A withholding tax, also called a retention tax, is a government requirement for the payer of an item of income to withhold or deduct tax from the payment, and pay that tax to the government.
The country’s tax agency; the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), had earlier stated that it is committed to fulfilling its obligations as one of the regulatory bodies for the rapidly emerging oil and gas sector. Part of that commitment, it said, is to implement rigid systems to closely monitor companies that are in the business of exploration and extraction of petroleum.
Gm, its hard to digest all this O&G leactures seems everyone wants to advice to collect