At a recent media briefing on the upcoming coconut festival, questions were asked on the current value of the coconut industry in Guyana and why is there no tangible evidence of revitalization in light of its importance. While the current project might address the question of value through gathering of baseline data by the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI), it is worth noting that between 2008 and 2009 the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) reported a tenfold increase in export of de-husked nuts, then increases by steady increments for the next five years reaching over 11,000 metric tons in 2014.
According to GMC’s information referenced in a study commissioned by the International Trade Centre (ITC) in 2015 : the country exports a range of coconut products with an estimated total export value of US$4.35 million in 2013 (Sealey-Adams & Hanif, 2015). Ranked by shares of export value, the top export product is de-husked coconuts, accounting for approximately 70% of total export in 2013 … A distant second is copra, or dried coconut kernel, followed by crude coconut oil, each, respectively, accounting for just 15% and 9% of total export value in 2013 (Sealey-Adams & Hanif, 2015). The share of non-traditional export products—primarily coconut water— still remains small, just about 2% of total export in 2013.