The Total Budgeted for 2025 is GYD 1,382,150,486,000.
The Total OPEX Budgeted for 2025 is GYD 644,469,923,000.
The Total CAPEX Budgeted for 2025 is GYD 737,680,563,000.
The government is undertaking 185 major projects.
Guyana as a developing nation requires heavy CAPEX investments. Thanks to the oil revenues the government has been able to significantly increase its CAPEX budget over the last few years. In 2025 CAPEX accounts for 53% of the total budget, a trend that is likely to continue for the next few years as the government focuses on infrastructure development to support the growing economy.
In 2023 OPEX spending dominated however by 2024 and in 2025 the spending on CAPEX significantly increased, by 117% in 2024 and again by 22% in 2025. This shows a conscious effort to prioritize long term investment in infrastructure. However, this increase in infrastructure will result in greater OPEX expenditure in the future to at the very least maintain the new infrastructure.
We can see that much of the capex spending is happening in infrastructure sectors. Public Works, Office of the PM, Housing and Water have significant portfolios in infrastructure development.
A concern, however, is the relatively tiny OPEX budget for Public Works. We see that there were significant capital projects undertaken in 2024 and 2025 yet the OPEX budget is only 6% of the total budget. This raises questions about the government's plans for maintenance of new assets. Without adequate funding for OPEX, there is a risk that the infrastructure projects may not be sustainable in the long term.
It is even worse with regards to Ministry of Housing and Water. However, this may be due to the fact that some of the maintenance costs are being absorbed by GWI, Local Government, and private individuals (for the maintenance of their assigned house lots).
We see that most Infrastructure programmes are under Ministry of Public Works and the PM's office and is dominated by CAPEX spending. This makes sense as the PM's office is in charge of the gas to energy project. We also see that many social services are distributed among many agencies. While the main ministries get the bulk of the financing, smaller agencies also share some of these responsibilities.
We are limiting our view only to those government agencies that account for at least 2% of total government budget. What our graph above shows is that there is almost one-to-one relationship between government agencies and category of programmes they engage with. This provides clarity in responsibilities and focuses an agency on specific tasks.
We also see that the Ministry of Finance is the main contributor to "General Administration & Governance". This ministry therefore has overall responsibility for running the state machinery.
To show the degree of concentration of spending per ministry, we use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI is usually used in to measure the concentration of firms in a market to show the presence of monopolies. However, we can also use it to measure the concentration of spendingwithin a ministry.
Values closer to 1 will tell us which ministries/agencies are functionally specialized, focusing on a few key programmes. Values closer to 0 will indicate which ministries/agencies have are multi-sectoral and have a wide range of responsibilities and power.
Here we show how many government agencies/ministries share responsibilities for programmes that are similar. As is to be expected functions of general administrtion and governance will be shared since each agency has to manage its own internal affairs.
There are however some overlaps that can lead to inefficiencies. We see that several agencies are involved in "health & social protection", "education & human capital development" and "agri., fisheries & agro services". There will likely be duplication of functions and responsibilities as well as conflicting priorities.
We see that Total Statutory Expenditure is much smaller than Appropriated Expenditure. This is a good indication as it allows the government the freedom to allocate resources according to its priorities rather than being constrained by required expenditures such as debt servicing.
Within Appropriated Expenditure, we see that funding for Local Organizations and Constitutional Agencies as well as Wages and Salaries take up the largest portion of the OPEX budget. This suggests a strong emphasis on supporting these key areas within the government's overall budgetary framework.
It is worth noting that Wages and Salaries is just the second largest expenditure in the Appropriated Expenditure category. In most governments, especially in developing and public-service-heavy economies Wages and Salaries are usually the single largest component of Appropriated Expenditure. Guyana is, however, different as the government allocates significant resources to Local Organizations and Constitutional Agencies, which may include funding for various development projects and initiatives.