While Guyana’s GDP growth rate is expected to reach unprecedented levels this year because of the commencement of crude oil production, three events will almost certainly have an adverse effect on such growth. These are the yet-to-be-determined elections outcome, falling oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic. The situation is made worse because of weak public service delivery and monitoring systems that ‘constrain the development of policies to reduce poverty and protect the vulnerable’. These observations are contained in the World Bank’s 12 April 2020 semi-annual report on Latin America and the Caribbean to be found at https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33555.
The report projects a GDP growth of 51.7% this year (considerably less than the 86 percent reported earlier), 8.7% for 2021 and 2.6% for 2022. We must, however, caution that, while GDP growth is generally considered a reasonable measure of economic health of the country, it does not necessarily translate to a corresponding improvement in the standard of living of citizens. GDP growth, by definition, is the increase in the production of all goods and services in a country during a given period of time, regardless of who owns the means of production. This is unlike GNP growth which excludes goods and services produced in a country by non-residents.