The Guyana dollar to US$ exchange rate depreciated slightly from $204.5 in 2012 to $206.1 by the end of 2013. Since January 2014 the rate remained fixed at $206.5 to one US$ until the end of January 2016, the last period for which the data set is publicly available. This rate is the mid-point rate between the buying and selling rates. The unchanged rate implies Guyana appears to have transitioned to a fixed exchange rate (or fixed peg) instead of the crawling peg regime it maintained since the late 1990s. This is an appropriate foreign exchange regime for a small very open economy such as Guyana. Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize and the ECCU countries have maintained successful pegged or fixed rate regimes. Recent research coming out from Central Bank of Barbados indicates that human well-being (or prosperity) is higher in the long run for countries with fixed and managed rate regimes.
Guyana’s contemporary fixed rate regime – from January 2014 to present – is pretty new by regional standards with several Caribbean states maintaining a successful peg since 1975. These territories tend to have greater social cohesion compared with Guyana whose politics is acrimonious