The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s recent report forecasted a 38.4 percent real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for Guyana in the current year, with expectations of a continued expansion at 26.6 percent in 2024. Notably, Guyana stands alone as the only country in the region where double-digit growth is anticipated.
In response to this surge, Guyana’s Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, engaged in discussions with the IMF’s Deputy Managing Director (DMD), Mr. Kenji Okamura, on October 15. Dr. Singh emphasized the uniqueness of Guyana’s economic circumstances, stating, “There are very few relevant comparators for what we are achieving and what we are experiencing in terms of the economic growth and the rapid economic transition that we are going through. There are very few, if any, historic precedents for this kind of growth.”
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Dr. Singh, however, urged observers to look beyond recent achievements and consider Guyana’s economic journey through a broader lens, emphasizing the country’s progress.
He acknowledged that Guyana had once been among the “most heavily indebted poor countries globally”. But over time, he added that the nation worked to transform its economic position.
“There was a time when Guyana’s debt to GDP ratio was more than 600 percent, and it took hard work to get us from where we were as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) with debt to GDP exceeding 600 percent and debt service to revenue exceeding 100 percent to bring us to a point where our debt to GDP ratio was about 60 percent, and that is before we started producing oil,” Dr. Singh elaborated.
Guyana’s growth continues to be in a league of its own, in a world grappling with economic uncertainties. In 2023, the expected growth is driven by the continuous stable production throughout the year at ExxonMobil’s Liza projects and the upcoming launch of the Payara oil development project.
The Payara project, scheduled for later this year, is poised to contribute an additional 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) to Guyana’s daily oil output. For context, the country’s current daily oil production hovers around 380,000 bpd. Looking ahead to 2024, as the Payara project attains full production capacity, Guyana’s oil supply is projected to surge to approximately 600,000 bpd.
