…says maintaining investors’ confidence key to continued economic growth
Guyana’s continuous economic growth, projected to be 42.3 per cent this year, is being driven by the improved investment climate in the country. This is according to Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Komal Singh.
In an exclusive interview with Guyana Times, the PSC Chairman shared his thoughts on Guyana’s economic growth in the first half of the year, as recorded in the 2024 Mid-Year Report. The first half of 2024 saw the economy recording economic growth of 49.7 per cent. Singh also pointed out a crucial fact. The non-oil economy has been contributing significantly to this growth.
“There’s been continuous growth and those growth will continue to take place, because of what is happening in the country. The very important thing in that Mid-Year Report is that the growth is not just coming from oil and gas,” Singh highlighted.
PSC Chairman Komal Singh
“We’ve seen growth in almost every single sector. And the projection is to continue seeing those growth rates, with the next six months coming ahead of us. And it’s strictly because of the investment and investment climate that we currently have in Guyana,” he explained.
The PSC Chairman pointed out the attractiveness of Guyana as an investment destination, to foreigners who visit. And according to Singh, who is also the Managing Director of GAICO Construction and General Services, Guyana being able to maintain that investors’ confidence will be key to the country’s continued economic growth.
“We have a very high investment climate. It’s a destination; we have seen investors from all over the world come into Guyana and want to invest. And as long as we can maintain that investor confidence level, our investments and trajectory to growth, to development will continue to see those (growth rates) increasing.”
In the first half of this year, Guyana’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by an estimated 49.7 per cent, with the non-oil economy continuing its growth trajectory with an estimated 12.6 per cent growth.
In his 2024 budget projections, Senior Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh had put Guyana’s GDP growth at 34.3 per cent for the full year. However, as a result of this half-year performance, the country’s full-year forecast for real GDP growth in 2024 was revised to 42.3 per cent – an almost 10 per cent increase from initial projections, and the non-oil economy was now projected to expand by 11.8 per cent.
This would represent the fifth consecutive year in which the Guyanese economy would be growing at more than 20 per cent, and would result in Guyana growing at an annual average of 38.8 per cent over those five years.
The country’s non-oil economic growth was earlier this year branded by Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat as the second fastest in the world, making it clear that Guyana does not depend on just oil for its economic growth.
For instance, the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors are estimated to have grown by 8.7 per cent in the first half of the year. According to the report, this was driven by growth in other crops, rice, fishing, and forestry.
Growth in these subsectors, the report explained, outweighed the declines that were recorded for livestock and sugar. Meanwhile, the rice sector grew by 17.9 per cent in the first half of the year. The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) reported production of 362,030 tonnes of rice equivalent, compared with 302,295 tonnes in the first half of 2023.
When it comes to other crops, this is estimated to have expanded by 8.8 per cent in the first half of 2024, mainly due to increased production of vegetables, root crops, fruits, beans and cereals, and spices.
According to the report, production from these subcategories expanded by 14.2 per cent, 12.7 per cent, 7.1 per cent, 57.7 per cent and 3.3 per cent, respectively. Notably, corn production grew by nearly 400 per cent in the beans and cereals subcategory when compared with output in the first half of last year.
The fishing subsector also grew, by an estimated 27.7 per cent in the first half of the year, with growth recorded in both fish and shrimp production. It is also estimated that the forestry sector expanded by 13.2 per cent in the first half of this year.
