Economy grows by 4% – mid-2019 report

Aug 15, 2019 News

The domestic economy is estimated to have grown by four percent in the first half of 2019.

Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan

During a press conference, yesterday, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, said that the growth compares favourably to last year’s revised growth rate of five percent.
“This growth rate has been achieved in spite of weaker growth in the global economy and relatively unfavourable commodity prices in a number of sectors.”
In terms of commodity prices, the Minister said that global price changes for Guyana’s major traded commodities were mostly negative for the first half of 2019, “when we compare to the same period in 2018”. He provided that the international price of rice declined by 6.1 percent; timber weakened by 1.3 percent; sugar remained relatively unchanged, with a slight increase in June; and aluminium went down by eight percent.
The growth was registered with sectors such as rice (3.7 percent), in spite of the paddy bug infestation; other crops (4.8 percent), driven by root crops, spices and vegetables; gold (4.4 percent), spurred by declarations of small and medium miners; forestry (8.5 percent), driven by small and medium concessionaires; manufacturing, a critical sector, according to Jordan (3.6 percent), driven by rice and like manufacturing, including pharmaceuticals, beverages, edible items and timber products; construction (8.2 percent), on account of both public and private investments; services (4.6 percent), driven by wholesale and retail trade (5.9 percent); transportation and storage (5.5 percent); financial and insurance activities (4.1 percent); and other service activities (10 percent).
He said that expansions were also recorded for sand production (9.2 percent) and stone production (15.1 percent).
“And of course, you can see that this would have to be consistent with the fairly large expansion in the construction sector.” Minister Jordan said.
There were few contractions, namely sugar (2.7 percent); livestock (8.1 percent), creating a shortage on the market; fishing (2 percent); and bauxite (2.9 percent), “largely due to the strike action that was experienced at Rusal in early part of this year,” said the Minister.
He said that the buoyant outlook on the economy has caused Government to revise its end of year growth rate to 4.5 percent, up from 4.4 percent it had revised it in April when the IMF article IV consultation mission was in Guyana.
He said that the majority of production areas demonstrated strong growth, and that they were more than enough to collectively offset the few areas of reduction.
Further, the Finance Minister, in commenting on the external sector, said that the overall balance of payment fell by 37.9 percent to US$86.9M. He provided that, last year, that deficit was US$139.8M.
He added that, going forward, Government will separate the oil economy from the non-oil economy in its statistical reports.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News