Good Sunday morning, Guyana. The papers this weekend read like a collective exhale, and not the good kind. The kind where you realize you have been holding your breath for four years and the air finally comes out sounding like a tire deflating on the East Bank Highway. Pour your coffee. Let us walk through it.

1. The ExxonMobil arithmetic that refuses to go away

Kaieteur ran the numbers again and they still do not add up in our favour. Between 2020 and 2024, ExxonMobil, Hess, and CNOOC — the Stabroek Block partners — pulled in US$29 billion in profits. Guyana, the sovereign nation on whose seabed this oil is sitting, received US$5.4 billion in the same period. This is our “50/50 partnership.” The math is, as dem boys would say, mathing in a particular direction.

Chartered accountant Christopher Ram went on Oil and Gas Governance Network radio on Friday and used the word “amateurish” to describe the government’s refusal to ring-fence the projects in the Stabroek Block. Ring-fencing, for those who have better things to think about than oil accounting, is the mechanism by which costs from one project are kept separate from revenues of another. Without it, Exxon can — and Ram says is — using profits from producing fields to fund development costs on new fields, which delays the point at which Guyana sees our larger share of earnings.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is standard petroleum fiscal design that most other oil-producing nations figured out decades ago. The fact that we have not is either incompetence or deliberate. Either way, the citizens watching their grocery bills double are entitled to ask the question.

2. Ali to the nation: “brace yourself”

The President has warned Guyanese to “brace” for more price increases. This is the word he used. Brace. As in, prepare for impact.

The impact, per Ali, is the US-Iran conflict driving oil prices up globally. Fair enough — the world is the world, and the Strait of Hormuz closing and reopening at Iran’s convenience is genuinely going to move commodity prices. But. The Kaieteur editorial captured the part that needs saying: Guyanese were already suffocating under cost-of-living pressures long before this global crisis. Bourda market stalls. Stabroek market stalls. Household budgets stretched beyond limits. None of this is new. The US-Iran war is not the cause; it is the accelerant.

What the citizens would like to know — what a functioning democracy would be talking about — is what specific domestic action is being taken. Not “participate in regional dialogues.” Not “draft response matrices.” Actual measures that put rice on actual tables by actual Monday. So far, crickets.

3. The Exxon tax arrangement, revisited

Kaieteur ran a second piece this weekend noting that when the Government inked its first major energy deal with ExxonMobil, it agreed that the corporation would not pay taxes to the State. This is a provision widely criticized and widely defended. It is also, structurally, the reason Exxon’s $29 billion in profits does not translate to the revenue for Guyana that a normal tax regime would have produced.

We cannot undo the 2016 contract. We can, however, stop defending it as if it were the Ten Commandments. It was a deal signed by specific people at a specific moment and it can be, if not renegotiated, at least acknowledged honestly.

4. APNU on personal data protection: “not optional”

A Partnership for National Unity on Friday said the protection of citizens’ personal data is not optional, and called for implementation of a protection framework. This matters because Guyana’s Data Protection Act exists on paper but the enforcement infrastructure — the Data Protection Commissioner’s office, the complaint mechanism, the investigative capacity — is either stalled or skeletal.

Given that we are rolling out a Digital ID system that will tie citizens’ identities, biometric data, and transaction histories into a single state-managed database, having a functioning data protection regime is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundation on which the Digital ID system should be built. Building it second is building it wrong.

5. Scotiabank wins Best Bank in Caribbean (again)

Scotiabank Guyana has been named Best Bank in Guyana for 2026 by Global Finance magazine, part of its 33rd Annual Best Bank in the Caribbean awards. Congratulations to Scotia. The award notwithstanding, the question the magazine does not address — but Guyanese would like addressed — is why banking fees in this country remain among the highest in the region, why small-business lending remains borderline inaccessible without political connections, and why the digital banking infrastructure still requires a customer to take three working days off to open an account.

A prize for being the best of the options is not the same as being good.

6. Matthews Ridge airstrip, $800M, June completion

Infrastructure Minister Juan Edghill has announced that the $800 million Matthews Ridge airstrip will be completed in June. Matthews Ridge is in Region One and has been, for decades, one of the more difficult mining and agricultural areas to access. An operational airstrip will matter for the Region One economy.

The figure, though — $800 million Guyanese dollars (roughly US$3.8 million) for an airstrip — is worth noting against the scale of other recent Region One investments. We have been asked to accept that rural infrastructure costs what it costs. The citizens may reasonably continue to ask for the itemized cost breakdown.

7. 84 persons with disabilities graduate technical skills programme

84 persons with disabilities have graduated from a technical skills training programme. This is unambiguously good news. Programmes like this — specific, targeted, producing measurable graduates with measurable skills — are the kind of development work that matters regardless of which party runs them.

Recognition to the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, to the instructors, and most of all to the graduates themselves. A skills credential in a country transitioning to a higher-skill economy is not a small thing. It is a life-changing thing. Well done.

8. Canal #1 Polder agro-processing facility commissioned

On Saturday, the Canal #1 Polder agro-processing facility was commissioned by the Minister of Agriculture, signaling a major push toward value-added agriculture. Canal Number One has long been underutilized for its agricultural potential relative to its land quality. An agro-processing facility — if actually operated at capacity, if actually contracting with local farmers at fair prices, if actually producing products that reach markets — is exactly what the rural Region Three economy needs.

The “if” cascade is the entire question. A ribbon-cutting is not the same as an operating facility. We will revisit this one in six months to see whether it is producing or merely photogenic.

9. Rape charge in Essequibo

A 40-year-old man has been charged with rape at the Anna Regina Magistrate Court. The accused is Kalika Singh, a porter of Good Hope, Essequibo. This is noted for the record. The case will proceed through the courts.

10. Origins Fashion Festival dates announced

The Origins: Guyana Fashion Festival 2026 will be held July 3–5 under the theme “A Diamond Legacy: Fashioning 60 Years.” The launch was held Friday at the Railway Courtyard. The festival ties into Guyana’s 60th independence celebrations. Details are still rolling out; the lineup and participating designers will be announced closer to the date.

Fashion festivals do not fix economies. They do, however, remind us that Guyana has a creative class that deserves platforms, and that cultural production is part of nation-building. Two things can be true at the same time.

11. Canadian gold company sitting on 4.6M ounces

A Canadian gold company has been reported as sitting on 4.6 million ounces of gold in Guyana and is now looking for local transportation services. This is a positive story on its face — more gold production, more jobs, more royalties. The asterisk, as always, is whether the royalty arrangement actually produces meaningful state revenue, or whether we are about to watch the Exxon playbook repeat itself in the gold sector.

12. Reggae Girlz vs. Golden Jaguars tonight

Jamaica’s Reggae Girlz face Guyana’s Golden Jaguars tonight at the National Stadium in Kingston in the Concacaf Women’s World Cup Qualifiers. Full respect to our women going into a hostile stadium. A result here is a long shot by the numbers, but Guyanese football has been quietly building its women’s programme and nothing in this business is impossible.

Come home proud regardless of the scoreline. We see you.

Enjoy what remains of your Sunday. Tomorrow’s news will write itself. It always does.

— The Daily Brief