Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has expressed his displeasure with what he described as ExxonMobil Guyana’s attempt at taking credit for government revenue earned through taxes and described the tax revenues as “a part of a normal way of doing business in a country.” He also alluded to the oil giant’s attribution of growth of the national budget from 2020 to now to their tax revenue and the impression it creates that the country’s last budget was fully financed by revenue earned by their tax payments
“Now, this is very misleading. What Exxon should focus on is how much money they’re making. That’s what they should tell the reporters, not how much taxes we are collecting. Because this is already, we agree that this tax take is lower than what we should be getting. And this is not really taxes because none of this comes from taxes except the 2% royalty. So it’s not really a tax. because they pay zero tax.”
The Vice President also urged ExxonMobil to focus on its own revenue being earned from its activities in its public relations endeavours and not what the government is making
“It irks me as the same way that they did these billboards, that they look like they’re financing all of our activities in this country.”
Additionally, Vice President Jagdeo also disclosed that he had communicated his displeasure to ExxonMobil and reiterated that the financing for the country’s 2024 budget primarily came from the non-oil economy which accounted for more than 400 billion dollars.
ExxonMobil Guyana on Thursday, June 6 released its annual report which revealed that the company revenue surged to 1.1 trillion in 2023. The oil goliath also recorded a net profit of GY$ 614.6 billion .