News coming out of Guyana over the past two and a half years point out that money is not being circulated, the expression often used by the man and woman on the street to describe their economic feelings. People are not buying like before, they say. Vendors cannot sell all their fruits and vegetables. The stores are experiencing less traffic. The discontents of the masses are real and should not be trivialized.
This does not mean, however, that the economy is about to fall over the cliff. The economy grew at an annual rate of around 3% in 2016 in line with the higher growth rate since 2006 when the national accounts statistics were rebased. The export of gold in 2016 amounted to US$831 million. Just to put things into perspective, projections coming out from the Ministry of Finance expect Guyana to earn around US$500 million in oil revenues from 2020 to 2023 (this is quite optimistic in my opinion). Of course, this forecast could be realized if there are more discoveries and there is a significant increase in the price of oil in 2020 and beyond. Unfortunately