Guyana’s economy grew by 5.4% and remained stable in 2019, with key macroeconomic variables, such as the balance of payment deficits and debt to GDP ratio continuing to be favourable, according to the Ministry of Finance.
The 2019 end-of-year of report, published on the Ministry’s website, explains that following intensive work to rebase the Gross Domestic product (GDP), computations are more aligned to the economy’s changing and more diversified composition and Guyana’s reporting is also now in line with international standards for rebasing cycles of seven to 10 years.
A budget with projections for this year and a report on last year are still to be presented because of the ongoing electoral crisis.
However, the end-of-year report says that following the rebasing of Guyana’s GDP from the base year of 2006 to 2012, real growth in 2019 has been pegged at 5.4%, with the non-oil real GDP increasing by 4.3%.
Additionally, the balance of payments deficit fell to US$49 million, while foreign reserves climbed to US$575.6 million; the stock of money and quasi money grew by 16.8%, with private sector credit rising by 8.6%; and inflation remaining moderate, at 2.1%.
Further, the report indicates that the stock of public debt fell to US$1,689.1 million, 32.7% of nominal GDP.
The recorded growth was facilitated by expansion in most major sectors except for sugar production, which contracted by 11.8%.
The report states that output by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) fell significantly short of its production target while mining and quarrying, manufacturing, construction and services all expanded. Several of these sectors were positively influenced by Guyana becoming an oil producing country several months ahead of schedule.
“This development contributed to the 124.2% expansion in the petroleum and gas and support services subsector, which, in turn, drove growth of 10.6% in the mining and quarrying sector,” the report says.
In the bauxite sub-sector, newcomer Guyana Industrial Minerals Inc. scaled up bauxite production ahead of the official commissioning of its mine and processing plant, scheduled for 2020. Their output was enough to offset the lower production recorded by the two other companies in the industry.
In the gold subsector, the two large mining companies, Guyana Goldfields and Troy Resources, have recorded lower production as a result of operational setbacks that included the suspension of one company’s activities for almost 3 months. Guyana Goldfields has since shut operations as it prepares to switch to underground mining.
Small and medium scale miners, however, increased declarations by 25% the highest since 2016.
According to the report, this significant improvement was attributed to improved roads and weather conditions as well as favourable prices.
Like gold, the other mining subsector recorded growth for a second consecutive year, driven by an expansion in sand mining – a key input of the construction industry. This growth was strong enough to offset a contraction of 11.5% in diamond declarations.
Another sub-sector which has seen significant increase is rice, other crops, and fishing.
The quantity of paddy harvested, in 2019, reached 1,049,874 metric tonnes, the highest level since 2015, when the industry attained record production of 1,058,129 metric tonnes. Production in 2019, surpassed the 2018 harvest by 8.8%, or 84,755 metric tonnes, resulting in growth in the rice cultivation industry of 1%, in 2019. Other crops production expanded by 0.3%, as a result of increased production of pumpkin, cocoa, ginger, peppers, and pineapples while fishing experienced a mixed outcome growing by 0.7%.
Finfish production increased by 19.7% over the previous year, and shrimp production declined by 28%, due to an invasion of sargassum weed and other factors.
There were also “remarkable gains” in the livestock subsector: table egg production grew by 45.3%; beef production by 32.6%; pork by 66.8%; and mutton and goat meat by 8.1%.
However, poultry production declined by 7.8% leading to a contraction in the livestock subsector of 3.5%.
The manufacturing sector, on the other hand realised significant growth of 14.7%, the highest rate since 2013, when the sector grew by 8.2%.
This achievement was bolstered by rice and other manufacturing, which expanded by 26.4% and 14%, respectively.
The construction and services sectors expanded for a fourth consecutive year, with growth reaching 3.1%, 0.2% above the rate achieved in 2018. The services sector grew by 4.2%, the highest growth rate over the four-year period.
Driving this growth was wholesale and retail trade and repairs, administrative and support services, and transport and storage, which grew by 5%, 5.8%, and 6.9%, respectively.
