Erratic
Last week’s column highlighted what I consider to be a most distinctive feature of the extractive forest sub-sector’s performance in Guyana’s economy, during the past decade. The table that was presented there revealed the highly erratic annual contributions of the sub-sector to GDP. Thus, while GDP growth had averaged 4 per cent per annum over the past decade, the annual contributions of the forest sub-sector to this performance was quite inconsistent (ranging by more than one-third in the space of three years, from plus 20 per cent in 2006 to minus 13.6 per cent in 2008). Similarly, large swings also occurred during 2014-15.
The actual circumstances are, however, far more impactful, since not only has the sub-sector’s contribution been erratic, but its overall performance has been woefully weak, and declining.
Table 1 below shows that, over the decade, the annual percentage share of the sub-sector in GDP (in real terms), has been declining. Indeed, the mean contribution of the sub-sector to real GDP has averaged just about 3.5 per cent during the first half of the