Introduction
Regular readers would recall that I used national budget 2023 to portray Guyana’s macro-economic and micro-economic foundations as satisfying the standard definitional prerequisites for a nation designated to be a Petrostate. As acknowledged in that column, there are two such foundational prerequisites. These are 1] a nation’s demonstrated dependence on oil and gas production and export and 2] the consequential emergence of related social, cultural, political, geo-strategic and institutional features, practices, and systems.
Today’s column reveals that, one year later, the official macro-economic data in National Budget 2024 solidly confirms Guyana’s intensification of its reliance on the performance of its emerging oil and gas sector.