Finance Minister confirms 8% 2025 salary increase to be paid with July salaries
27 June 2025
Following Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo’s response to a question by the media on Thursday that public servants and teachers will receive the previously agreed eight percent increase in salaries for 2025 before the September 1 national elections, Finance and the Public Service, Dr. Ashni Singh, On Friday confirmed that this increase will be paid in July 2025.
“We would have all seen the question posed to Vice President Jagdeo at his most recent press conference in connection with the 2025 across the board 8 percent salary increase and we would have also seen Vice President Jagdeo’s response to that question. I am delighted to confirm that the 2025 salary increase will be paid in July, together with July salaries, and will be retroactive to 1 January 2025 in keeping with the multi-year agreements signed with the unions,” Dr. Singh said.
Dr Singh added, “It would be recalled that last year we concluded a number of historic multi-year agreements with several unions across the public sector, including the Guyana Teachers Union, the Guyana Public Service Union and other unions that represent employees at several other public sector agencies. Under these multi-year agreements, we saw an 8 percent across the board salary increase agreed for 2025.”
The Minister explained that even in the case of unions representing workers in a number of public sector companies such as the Guyana Oil Company (GUYOIL) and the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), as well as other agencies like the University of Guyana, multi-year agreements were concluded. Minister Singh described this as historic since this is the first time in recent memory that so many multi-year agreements were concluded with so many unions.
“This is an excellent thing, and it augurs very well for the industrial relations climate in Guyana, and it sends a very strong signal that collective bargaining is alive and is working extremely well in Guyana,” the Minister pointed out.
The Minister also pointed out that, since returning to office in August 2020, Government has implemented a multitude of other measures in the last five years to improve the lives of public servants and Guyanese across the country.
Public servants, teachers, members of the disciplined services and government pensioners have benefitted from annual salary increases of 7 percent in 2021, 8 percent in 2022, 6.5 percent in 2023 and 10 percent in 2024. On a cumulative basis, now with the 8 percent increase for 2025, these employees would have benefitted from a 46 percent increase in total over the five-year period from 2021-2025.
As regards the public sector wage bill, under the PPP/C Government this grew by 66 percent from $126.9 billion in 2020 to $210 billion in 2024, reflecting the across-the-board increases granted to workers, and the special salary adjustments made to selected categories of workers in the education, health and security sectors.
