The A Partnership for National Unity raised serious concerns on Friday about the Guyana Development Bank Bill tabled in the National Assembly the previous week by Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Kumar Singh. Lead Parliamentarian for the People’s National Congress Reform, Dr. Terrence Campbell, described the legislation as currently structured as a recipe for disaster, while stressing that the opposition supports the concept of a development bank but insists the governance framework must be fundamentally strengthened before the Bill receives parliamentary approval.
Dr. Campbell identified several structural weaknesses in the Bill. All board appointments, including the chairperson, deputy chairperson, and all directors, rest solely with the Finance Minister, with no provision for opposition nominees, civil society representatives, or independent oversight bodies. He proposed that at minimum one board member be nominated by the opposition, warning that without such a check, the institution is exposed to full political capture. He further noted that the Bill specifies no qualifications for the Chief Executive Officer, leaving the position open to a politically connected but professionally unsuited appointment. Additionally, the CEO is empowered to sign contracts unilaterally, a provision Campbell argued should require joint execution with the bank’s Secretary as a basic internal control.
The Bill also places the Guyana Development Bank entirely outside the Financial Institutions Act, meaning the regulatory framework governing commercial banks in Guyana does not apply. Approximately $40 billion in public funds will be disbursed under a bespoke legislative framework with no independent regulator. Campbell further highlighted that while the Bill penalises misleading the institution and leaking confidential information, it makes no provision for prosecuting banking officials who demand corrupt payments in exchange for approving loans. He also confirmed, in response to concerns raised by this publication, that the bank’s resources must be restricted exclusively to Guyanese citizens at this stage.
The government’s decision to introduce this Bill without first addressing the documented failures of its own procurement infrastructure is a contradiction that Parliament must confront directly. The Public Procurement Commission and the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board are legally empowered to penalise unqualified companies and corrupt officials and to blacklist delinquent contractors, yet the Auditor General’s 2024 Report identified more than $209 million in contracts that were either awarded without the required evaluation process or structured in a manner that breached procurement regulations. The same report found that the Guyana Police Force violated the Procurement Act of 2003 by illegally splitting 62 contracts totalling $15.047 million, a tactic used to avoid the scrutiny and oversight requirements of the NPTAB. In the Ministry of Housing, auditors uncovered $95 million in overpayments for infrastructure projects in Regions 3 and 4, with the Central Housing and Planning Authority’s internal audit unit described as weak. HGPTV + 2
These are not isolated incidents from a previous administration. They are findings from 2024, recorded while the government has repeatedly declared its commitment to transparency and zero tolerance for corruption. The opposition has noted that the award of government contracts was identified as a matter of central importance for race relations, social justice, and equal opportunity as far back as the 1999 Constitutional Reform Commission, which established the Public Procurement Commission as a body with constitutional powers to address this national problem. The problem has not been resolved. It has grown alongside the budget, and Vice President Jagdeo himself warned agency heads in September 2024 against the use of restrictive tendering to favour specific contractors and condemned instances where bribes are being solicited to expedite payments for completed work. Warnings, however, are not structural reform. Stabroek NewsGuyana Chronicle
This context makes the governance gaps in the Development Bank Bill not merely unfortunate. They are reckless. When a government that acknowledges ongoing procurement violations introduces legislation giving a single minister unchecked authority over $40 billion in lending, with no independent board oversight, no mandatory qualification standards, no transparent loan scoring system to prevent qualified applicants from being denied or unconnected ones from being rejected in favour of politically aligned ones, no explicit anti-corruption penalties for bank officers, and no requirement for external audits reported independently to Parliament rather than to the very board under ministerial control, it is not building a development institution. It is replicating the same accountability vacuum that has allowed procurement breaches to persist across ministries, police forces, and regional councils for years.
Parliament must demand the following before this Bill is passed: independent board representation from the opposition and civil society; statutory CEO qualification requirements; a transparent criteria-based loan scoring system with a formal appeals mechanism for rejected applicants; explicit criminal penalties for bank officers who solicit corrupt payments; external audits conducted by a reputable internationally recognised body reporting directly to Parliament; and a procurement framework for the bank’s own operational contracts aligned with the Procurement Act. The government cannot credibly claim to fight corruption while designing a $40 billion institution that contains none of these safeguards.
SOURCE: Kaieteur News, “Development Bank a recipe for disaster, APNU,” June 13, 2026
