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Ali
also promised to cut power bills by half and to increase the
monthly minimum wage from $350 to $500 starting next year as he
addressed Parliament during a special session late Thursday,
noting that the recently wealthy nation of nearly 800,000 people
can afford to help residents via public aid programs.
During a press conference after the session, Vice President
Bharrat Jagdeo said Guyana’s budget can easily absorb the
one-time cash grant to the country’s estimated 264,000
households.
“We have a $22-billion-dollar economy now,” he said.
Guyana was once one of the poorest countries in South America
despite large reserves of gold, diamonds and bauxite. But it has
been awash in money after a consortium led by ExxonMobil
discovered the first major oil deposits in May 2015 off the
country’s Atlantic coast.
Production began in December 2019, with an output of some
645,000 barrels a day expected to soar to 1.3 million by 2027.
In 2022, Guyana’s GDP grew by more than 60%, the highest real
GDP growth worldwide that year, according to the International
Monetary Fund.
Free tertiary education had been in place since the mid-1970s
but was discontinued in the early 1990s under pressure from the
IMF.
The offer of free university tuition is one of several new
measures to tackle the high cost of living, Jagdeo said.
Since becoming oil-rich, Guyana’s government has launched
infrastructure projects including the construction of hospitals,
hotels, schools, highways, its first deep-water port and a $1.9
billion gas-to-energy project expected to lower power bills.
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