Guyana to average more than 30% annual growth over 7-year period – Finance Minister

…says more int’l firms interested in making Guyana regional base

Guyana’s real economic growth is expected to average in excess of 30 per cent annually over the next seven years and according to Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh, the country’s growth projections are inspiring international companies to make it the hub for their regional operations.
The Finance Minister made this revelation during the recent official opening of the local office of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC). He pointed out that already, Guyana has consistently recorded over 40 per cent growth in recent years.
“We have recorded real economic growth of more than 40 per cent over the last three years. And we’re projected to record real economic growth of more than 20 per cent, on average, over the next four years.”
“Taken together, those developments imply that the Guyanese economy would have and will be growing, by an average of more than 30 per cent annually over a seven-year period,” the Finance Minister explained.
Moreover, Dr Singh recounted conversations he has had with international companies on the trajectory that Guyana is taking and moreover, they have expressed enough faith in Guyana to look to make the country their regional base of operations.

“A number of those companies have said to us they anticipate their Guyana operations becoming a hub for their regional operations, given the production trajectory and the anticipated scaling up of their own operations in Guyana, as a result of the expansion of demand in Guyana,” he said.
With a projected growth rate of 37.2 per cent for 2023, Guyana is already expected to continue its trend this year of outpacing every other Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) country when it comes to economic growth.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its World Economic Outlook, had noted that of the other LAC countries, St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) at 6.0 per cent has the next highest growth projection for this year.
But while SVG’s growth is expected to fall next year to 5.0 per cent, Guyana’s is expected to increase to 45.3 per cent. The report states, however, that by 2028 Guyana’s economic growth will drop to 3.3 per cent.
Meanwhile, other LAC countries that will record single-digit economic growth this year include Panama at 5.0 per cent, neighbouring Venezuela at 5.0 per cent, Dominica at 4.9 per cent, St Kitts and Nevis at 4.5 per cent and the Dominican Republic at 4.2 per cent.
Guyana has already recorded a whopping 59.5 per cent real economic growth in the first half of 2023, driven not only by the oil and gas sector, but also the non-oil economy which has been growing for successive years.
This was disclosed in the Finance Ministry’s Half Year Report, which presents statistics on Guyana’s economic performance for the first half of the year. The non-oil economy, according to the report, grew by 12.3 per cent. And, this growth trend is expected to continue.
The report further disaggregates the growth by sectors. For instance, the gold mining and quarrying sector is estimated to have grown by 89.9 per cent in the first half of the year. The report explains that this increase outweighed the decline observed in the gold mining and bauxite mining subsectors.
Meanwhile, the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors are estimated to have expanded by 7.6 per cent in the first half of the year. This was driven by growth in all subsectors – namely other crops, rice growing, livestock, fishing, forestry, and sugar.
When it comes to the oil and gas sector, this has been a major contributor to Guyana’s economic growth. Another oil and gas project – the Payara development – is expected to start up by this year end, targeting an estimated resource base of about 600 million oil-equivalent barrels. (G3)