By Vishani Ragobeer
The $1.38 trillion National Budget for 2025 was passed without changes on Wednesday night.
The Appropriation Bill, which authorises the release of the budget sum, was passed in the National Assembly.
The budget’s passage came after a week of budget debates and four days of the consideration of estimates in the Parliamentary Committee of Supply. And it was passed without changes though some funds out of that budget is chargeable by law, directly to the Consolidated Fund.
The Income Tax (Amendment) Bill was also approved in the House.
Dr. Singh explained that the purpose of this Bill was to bring into law the various meausres announced in budget 2025. Those measures include increasing the income tax threshold to $130,000 and an introduction of a deduction of up to $10,000 per month per child from one parent’s taxable income.
The removal of tax on income earned from a second job up to $50,000 and the removal of tax on overtime income up to $50,000 are also catered for.
Finally, the amended legislation allows for a reduction of the tax burden on every single taxpayer by reducing the two rates applicable to taxable income from 28% to 25%, and the second rate from 40% to 35%.
This trillion-dollar budget is the largest ever in Guyana’s history.
The budget is the government’s spending plan for the year. As such, there are key sectoral allocations. These allocations were defended by the Government Minister during the consideration of the estimates.
There are also designated funds for Guyana’s 10 administrative regions.
Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Sonia Parag spent all day Tuesday fielding questions about the funds that went to the administrative regions in five key areas: regional administration and finance, agriculture, public works, education delivery, and health services.
The budget doesn’t only detail the government’s intended spending (expenditures).
This year, Guyana’s total revenue (or the total income the country garners) should amount to $1.35 trillion. With total expenditure pegged at $1.38 trillion, the country will record a deficit of about $27.54 billion.
A summary of the country’s revenues and expenditures is shown in the chart below:
Aside from the taxes the government collects, funds will also come from Guyana’s Natural Resource Fund (NRF), the carbon credits venture, and Guyana’s REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF).
The country should also receive about $7.9 billion in grants.
For additional context, the NRF is Guyana’s oil wealth fund which holds the country’s cut of the revenues from oil sales and royalties. Dr. Singh, during his 2025 budget presentation, noted that about $512.4 billion (or US$2.46 billion) from the fund will be used to help fund this year’s budget; there was about $533.9 billion (or about US$2.57 billion) in the fund at the end of 2024.
Then there is GRIF, which is a multi-contributor trust fund that serves as a crucial component of the Guyana-Norway Partnership. Through this partnership, Guyana was paid to keep its forests intact. And the funds received are to promote low-carbon development in Guyana.
Then there is the carbon credits venture. Through the current deal with oil firm Hess, some US$750 million is being paid to Guyana for forest-saving actions. Hess bought about one-third of the special ART TREES carbon credits issued to Guyana up to 2030.
There were also budgetary measures announced by the Finance Minister when he presented the National Budget in January that will be accounted for in the budget.
The measures include funds that will be disbursed to people. These transfers range from public assistance payments and payments of the old age pension to cash grants for schoolchildren, all adults, and newborn babies.
Though not explicitly set out in the budget, the government’s accounting of revenues, and changes to that, is also recorded.
As part of the budgetary measures, the government will be foregoing some taxes this year.
For example, the income tax threshold was increased to $130,000 monthly. This move, Dr. Singh had explained, will remove about 22,000 workers from the tax net. The government will forego about $8.5 billion in taxes this year to account for this change.
The budgetary measures in the 2025 budget are shown below.
With the budget now passed, the government ministries and agencies can now execute their annual work plan.
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