By LCN Business Desk
The eight contracts for the Craig to Land of Canaan highway on the East Bank of Demerara were awarded in December 2024, and the road is half built. Not one of them appears on Guyana's register of awarded tenders.
Which award is missing?
The Craig to Land of Canaan four-lane highway, the most expensive phase of the East Bank corridor.
It is half built on the East Bank of Demerara, and its eight contracts, awarded in December 2024, total G$52.56 billion, against an engineer's estimate of G$49.55 billion given at the bid opening, as Kaieteur News reported. Averaged across the lots that is G$6.57 billion a contract.
None of the eight is on the register. The words Craig and Land of Canaan return one row, an electrical upgrade on Craig Street in Georgetown. December 2024 carries two Guyana-dollar awards above a billion, one for engineering services at the Ministry of Public Works and one for a secondary school. Of the 3,036 rows the register dates to 2024, the largest in any currency is G$3,179,512,849, for the four-lane approach to the new Demerara River bridge.
::: The award was made, reported, and built on for two years. The national register of awarded tenders does not contain it. :::
Does the Board say what the register is meant to contain?
Nowhere that is published.
The page carries ten column headings and no note on scope: no threshold above which an award must appear, no statement of which procuring entities report into it, no date from which it runs. The Board's own 84-page Guide to the Public Procurement Procedures sets out the tendering methods and the evaluation rules and does not describe the register at all.
Without that note, nobody outside the Board can say whether the road is an omission or a category the register was never meant to hold. The absence is measurable. Its meaning is not.
Can you total what a single ministry has been awarded?
Not to one number, because the register does not hold a buyer under one name.
The Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation appears in the procuring-entity column as "Ministry of Public Utilities & Aviation", as "Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation", as "Ministry of Public Utilities & Avaition" and as "Ministry of Public Utilities". A fifth row misspells it again and shares the contract with Guyana Water Inc.
Count only the spelling on the ministry's largest award and it holds 14 contracts worth G$4.56 billion. Count every spelling and it holds 26 worth G$5.08 billion. Both figures are defensible, they are half a billion dollars apart, and the register offers no way to choose between them. A supplier sizing that ministry as a customer, or a journalist sizing its spending, gets whichever answer their search happened to use.
Are the amounts reliable?
One award this year is published at a thousand times the bid that was reported for it.
The register books the salvage of the MV Barima at G$1,034,000,000. In September three firms bid to raise the MV Barima, and their offers to the Board were reported by Demerara Waves with BK International Inc. at US$1,034,000. This newspaper carried that figure and recorded that a second outlet had published the same three bids as Guyana dollars in the billions, a thousandfold difference nobody had resolved.
The register has now taken a side. The digits are identical, the sign is a Guyana dollar and there are three more zeros than the reported bid. One of the three records is wrong by a factor of a thousand and nothing published says which.
What else is blank or wrong in it?
Four of the ten columns, on between 12 and 18 per cent of the rows each.
| Column | Rows it fails on |
|---|---|
| Currency left blank | 2,153 |
| Procurement method left blank | 1,459 |
| Contract amount missing or unreadable | 1,470 |
| Date of award left blank | 1,456 |
Counted from the register as served on 4 November 2026.
The entries that are present are not always of the type the column calls for. Sixteen rows give a contract reference where the award date belongs, such as "28/2021/45 Ret". Fifteen give a number where the procurement method belongs, and on one of them that number is 69000000, which is also the contract amount, for drilling a potable well at Moruca. The currency column holds "UD$" on eight rows, "G$ US$" on four, "G4" on two and a bare 0 on seven, and spells the United States dollar two ways across 402 rows.
Dates are kept in at least four formats, and eleven rows carry an award year of 1957, 0222, 2031, 2040 or 2926, so the published range runs from the year 222 to the year 2926.
Is the register still worth using?
Yes. It is the only public record of who the Guyanese state pays.
It is how a G$3,615,354,000 award for beacons and a vessel traffic service on the Demerara became public at all, since no release ever announced it. The register is doing work no other document does.
The discipline it demands is a different matter. Search a buyer under every spelling of its name. Check a currency against the scale of the thing being bought. Treat a total as a floor rather than a figure, because an award of that size sits outside it. And on two-thirds of the rows, the column headed No. of Tenders/Proposals does not count the bids for the contract beside it.
What is not established here?
Why the eight Craig to Land of Canaan lots are absent, and how much else awarded since 2020 is missing with them. The register publishes no statement of its own coverage.
Whether the gaps are an uploading practice, a reporting rule inside the procuring entities, or a threshold nobody has written down.
Which of the three MV Barima figures is the correct one.
Whether the three internationally tendered rows printing contract amounts of 8, 1.2 and 0.83 are millions or a fault in the data.
The entities
- National Procurement and Tender Administration Board is the Guyanese body that publishes the awarded-tenders register of 12,316 rows this article measures. - Craig to Land of Canaan highway is the eight-lot road contract of December 2024, valued at G$52.56 billion, that the register does not carry. - Guide to the Public Procurement Procedures is the Board's own 84-page manual, which describes the tendering methods and not the register. - Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation is the procuring entity the register books under four spellings of its name. - MV Barima is the Guyana ferry whose salvage award the register prices at G$1,034,000,000 against a reported bid of US$1,034,000. - BK International Inc. is the firm that won that salvage award. - Ministry of Public Works is the buyer on one of the two Guyana-dollar awards above a billion that December 2024 does carry.
What the title card says
- Headline: Guyana publishes 12,316 contract awards, and a G$52.56 billion road is not among them. - The missing award: Craig to Land of Canaan highway, eight lots, G$52.56 billion, December 2024. - Largest award the register does date to 2024, in any currency: G$3,179,512,849. - Rows the register holds in total: 12,316. - Spellings of one ministry's name in the procuring-entity column: four. - Two defensible totals for that ministry: G$4.56 billion over 14 awards, or G$5.08 billion over 26. - Rows with no currency: 2,153. No procurement method: 1,459. No usable amount: 1,470. No award date: 1,456. - Rows giving a contract reference where the award date belongs: 16. - Published statement of what the register covers: none. - Source: the awarded-tenders register published by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board, retrieved 4 November 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Craig to Land of Canaan highway contract on Guyana's awarded-tenders register?
No. Its eight lots were awarded in December 2024 for a combined G$52.56 billion and none of them appears on the register's 12,316 rows. Of the 3,036 rows the register dates to 2024, the largest in any currency is G$3,179,512,849.
Does the register say which contracts it includes?
No. The page carries ten column headings and no statement of scope, and the Board's own procurement guide describes the tendering methods without describing the register. So an absence cannot be read as an omission or as a category deliberately excluded.
Why can a ministry's total spending not be stated from it?
Because a buyer is not held under one name. The Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation appears under four spellings, giving 14 awards worth G$4.56 billion or 26 worth G$5.08 billion depending on which are counted.
How complete are the register's own columns?
Of 12,316 rows, 2,153 carry no currency, 1,470 no usable contract amount, 1,459 no procurement method and 1,456 no award date. Sixteen rows give a contract reference where the award date belongs.
Should a business rely on the register?
It is the only public record of who the Guyanese state pays, so yes, with bounds. Search each buyer under every spelling of its name, check a currency against the scale of what is being bought, and treat any total as a floor, since at least one award of G$52.56 billion sits outside it.