Guyana’s economy grew by 33% last year, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh announced moments ago during his delivery of Budget 2024.
The nonoil economy, he said, grew by 11.7%.
Dr Singh explained that at the time of preparing Budget 2023, it was projected that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would grow by 25.1% with the nonoil economy projected to expand by 7.1%.
The theme for Budget 2024 is “Staying the course: Building prosperity for all”.
Expanding on the performance of the economy last year, Dr Singh revealed that sugar production grew by 28%, rice grew by 7%, fishing by 37.8%, while the livestock industry expanded by 12.7% and aquaculture production expanded by 70%.
Additionally, forestry expanded by 5.4%, mining and quarrying sector expanded by 42.6%, while the oil and gas expanded by 45.9%, following the procurement of the third Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Liza Prosperity.
Further, the construction sector expanded by 26.8%.
With those developments in the domestic economy, Dr. Singh also highlighted that the inflation rate in Guyana was lower last year.
In this regard, he disclosed that inflation was at 2% at the end of 2023, lower than the inflation rate of 7.2% in 2022.
This is the fifth budget of the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government since its return to government in 2020 and the second to be funded in part by proceeds from oil production offshore Guyana.
