1st time local agriculture budget tops $100 billion mark

Ashni Singh, Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, on Friday announced that $104.6 billion has been allocated to the agriculture sector, the highest budgetary allocation for the sector to date.
Delivering the country’s 2025 national budget under the theme, ‘A secure, prosperous and sustainable Guyana’, he noted that the measures will see the agriculture sector continuing to grow in 2025.
This is expected to realise further development of agriculture, which plays a major role in Guyana’s food security.
The fisheries, vegetables, other crops, fruits, coconut, livestock and rice are all showed significant improvements for 2024, though sugar did not support the overall growth in the industry during 2024.
On the international market, the price of sugar fell by 3 per cent but is expected to rise by 2 per cent in 2025, while rice prices are expected to decline by 8.5 per cent.
In 2024, sugar production is estimated to have declined by 21.8 per cent, with Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) producing 47,103 tonnes
The Minister attributed the poor performance of the sector to El Niño, and a shortage of labour, which affected the industry year-round.
This year, a further 3,000 acres will be converted to further support GuySuCo’s mechanisation programme.
“Key investments will be made to acquire additional field equipment, rehabilitate field infrastructure and construct over 17 kilometres (km) of all-weather roads across the industry. To this end $13.3 billion is budgeted to continue to rehabilitate and support the sugar industry,” Dr Singh said at the budget presentation.
While the rice sector grew by 9.3 per cent last year, he also disclosed that the sector was not spared the callousness of the previous administration when it was in office between 2015, and 2020.
“They boldly proclaimed that rice is private business and therefore not the concern of Government,” he pointed out.
He said too that the sector responded favourably to those harsh measures since 2020.
“We constructed a drying floor and a screening house, developed climate smart rice varieties, we increased investment in pest resistant- bio fortified and high yielding varieties of rice. We supported the development of value-added products and expanded export markets.”
Additionally, more than 2,000 farmers were trained in rice crop husbandry.
The Government also distributed fertiliser directly to farmers, at a cost of $3.8 billion.
“In 2025 our investments will include improvements to the storage facility at Number 56 Village on the Corentyne, to improve storage capacity,” he announced.
According to Minister Singh, $420 million has been allocated in the 2025, budget for the rice sector.
“The GRDB [Guyana Rice Development Board] reported that 700,282 metric tonnes of rice were produced in 2025, compared with 653,706 tonnes in 2023. This performance can be attributed to better yields which improved to 6.6 tonnes per hectares in 2024 from 6.3 tonnes the year before with some rice producing regions averaging above 7 metric tonnes per hectare,” he declared.
There has been a 10.9 per cent growth in the other crops sub-sector with expansion observed across major crop categories.
“Particularly substantial growth was noticed in the production of vegetables, fruits, root crops, cereals, coconut and spices, – largely on account of increased acreage,” the Minister explained.
Coconut production is poised to become a major player in Guyana’s export market.
Cultivation of coconuts has been expanded from 17,100 acres to 32,556 acres with more than 280 farmers involved.
Over 50,000 nuts were provided to farmers last year.
This year, $116 million has been budgeted specifically to promote coconut production.
There was also significant growth in the production of spices – ginger, turmeric, black pepper and nutmeg. Over 100,000 kg of planting material was distributed to farmers over the past four years with 28,000 being distributed last year.
There were also significant investments in the non-traditional crops, including corn and soya beans, citrus, spices and high value crops.
In 2024, there were eight new investors taking up the production of soya up from the initial two investors in 2023.
“There was notable growth for corn and soya production with an estimated growth of an estimated 154.8 per cent and 129.2 per cent respectively, he revealed, which he attributed to the increased investment being made in the sub-sector.
He also said that, the Government will “continue to partner with the private sector in an effort to achieve self-sufficiency in soya production by the end of the year.”
To date, the private sector has cultivated 22,000 acres of corn and soya beans.
“Beyond 2025, Guyana will become closer to becoming a net exporter of soya to the Caribbean; moving from producing none to meeting our domestic requirements and exporting to CARICOM,” Dr Singh disclosed.
Meanwhile, local livestock industry is estimated to have grown by 24.6 per cent. Growth was observed across all subcategories.
Based on the latest estimates, the production of poultry grew by 31 per cent, beef by 35 per cent with the production of eggs and milk also showing significant growth.
“The notable increase in poultry production can be attributed to a reduction in mortality rates following vaccination against the virtual diseases affecting chickens, county wide distribution of baby chicks and the acceleration of GLDA’s (Guyana Livestock Development Authority) breeding programme,” the Minister added.
The department will get $1.6 billion to further advance its agenda this year.
Meanwhile, there was an estimated one per cent growth in the fishing industry in 2024.
Shrimp production increased by 8.5 per cent, outweighing a two per cent contraction in fish production.
“While improvements were seen in fin-fish production, there was a contraction in the production of red snapper. At the same time, we continue to see the results of our interventions in aquaculture, and it is estimated that aquaculture production expanded by 13.7 per cent in 2024, with growth of 19.1 per cent in the production of Brackish Water Shrimp,” he said.
Among the projects set for this year is the establishment of a shrimp hatchery. The sector will receive $1.3 billion, as against $1.1 billion last year.
Meanwhile, there was also an increase in lending to the private sector for investment. Lending directly to the agriculture sector showed an 18 per cent increase.  Most of that money was borrowed by rice farmers and persons in inland shrimp production.
Minister Singh noted that since the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) took office in 2020, lending to the private sector grew by over 73.4 per cent compared with a growth of 18.2 during the previous five years.
Meanwhile, some 200 shade houses were constructed in 2024, to assist with the further development of the agriculture sector, which has benefited 90 farmers and 67 farmer’s groups. Since taking office in 2020, over 600 shade houses were constructed by the agriculture Ministry.
“To ensure that these and other initiatives continue, $524 million were budgeted in 2024, and a further $800 million is budgeted in 2025,” he announced.