Guyana has seen a growth of 8.7 percent in the agriculture sector, except for sugar, driven by rice, fishing, and forestry, according to the country’s Mid-Year Financial report recently released by the Ministry of Finance.
“Growth in these subsectors outweighed the declines observed for livestock and sugar…,” the report states.
Rice, the report estimates to have grown by 19.9 percent, with the Guyana Rice Development Board reporting production of 362.030 tonnes of rice, compared with 302,295 tonnes in the first half of 2023.
“On account of favourable weather conditions, the yield achieved for the first crop of 2024 was 6.6 tonnes per hectare, compared with 6.2 tonnes per hectare in the first crop of last year. Given the better-than-anticipated performance in the first crop, the production estimate for the year has been revised upward to 717,032 tonnes of rice equivalent. The sector is now projected to grow by 8.9% this year, better than the 6.2% stated in the Budget,” the report says.