At the close of 2023, the Guyana government received way more revenue that it expected—$19.884 Billion more to be exact.
This is outlined in the Auditor General’s report which, on an annual basis, provides key findings on how well state agencies collect revenues as well as how poorly they spend budgetary allocations.
The Ministry of Finance provided a detailed account of the surplus. The main category which contributed to the increase was internal revenue. The report notes that this category was estimated to bring in $197.9 billion but over $29 billion more was deposited into the Consolidated Fund.
Similarly, Value Added Taxes, Excise Taxes, Rent and Royalties and Customs and Trade Taxes exceeded the budgetary allocations by $6.788 billion, $8.362 billion, $2.961 billion, and $1.385 billion respectively.
Notably, internal revenue exceeded the budgeted amount of $197.891 billion by $29.970 billion. The main sub-categories accounting for the higher collections were Private Corporation Tax of $5.744 billion, Personal Income Tax of $7.036 billion, and Withholding Tax of $14.201 billion, on account of higher collections predominantly from companies within the oil and gas sector.
As for Excise Taxes, this exceeded the budgeted amount of $23.382 billion by $8.362 billion, mainly on account of higher collections of $5.312 billion from motor vehicles, and $3.542 billion from petroleum products. The increased collections from vehicles resulted from an increase of imports from 11,938 in 2022 to 21,664 in 2023, of which 6,961 vehicles benefitted from the Excise Tax measure implemented in 2023.
The surplus of $6.788 billion for Value Added Tax (VAT) was largely on account of collections from the Private Sector, including oil and gas companies. Collections from imports of goods were recorded at $114.769 million above the budget level of $28.272 billion.
Higher revenue collection was also recorded from lottery receipts by $77.500 million.
The foregoing performance helped to cushion the shortfall in expected revenue for several categories. These include carbon credit inflows, dividends and transfers, and inflows from the Natural Resource Fund were $25.490 billion, $3.437 billion, $522.360 million below the budgeted amounts respectively. Lower collections were also realised from alcoholic beverages totalling $301.673 million and for tobacco, $190.068 million.
