Guyana’s economy is set to grow 16.2% in 2026, slowing from 19.3% in 2025, with the oil and gas sector continuing to drive expansion, Finance Minister Ashni Singh said on Monday.<\/p>\n
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Singh, presenting \u200cthe nation’s annual budget, said the oil sector is set to grow 17.9% this year, compared with 21% in 2025 and 57.7% in 2024, and is likely to produce an average of 840 000 barrels per day (bpd).<\/p>\n
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Singh forecast 309 crude oil cargo exports, up from \u200c260 last year, and estimated oil revenue of about $2.79 billion. A cargo of crude oil contains approximately one million barrels.<\/p>\n
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The oil sector is likely to remain central to economic growth in 2026, with production from a fifth offshore project slated \u200dto begin later in the year.<\/p>\n
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ExxonMobil raised its oil production capacity in Guyana to more than 900 000 bpd last year, and a new project set to be developed this year will further raise \u2060production to up to 1.15 million bpd.<\/p>\n
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The government is widely expected to maintain an \u200dinfrastructure-heavy budget stance, deploying oil revenue to support its goals of building 40 000 homes over five \u200cyears \u200cand expanding road networks.<\/p>\n
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In 2025, the economy recorded double-digit growth for the sixth consecutive year, even though growth in oil production and exports slowed compared to previous years. The non-oil sector grew 14.3%, driven mainly by agriculture, mining, construction and the services industry, \u2060Singh said.<\/p>\n
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“Our overall real \u2060economic growth continues to be supported by strong expansion in oil and gas activity, as well as sustained growth across the non-oil sectors of the economy,” he said.<\/p>\n
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Crude output throughout 2025 totaled 261.1 million barrels, \u200dup from 225.4 million in 2024, as a consortium led by ExxonMobil started operations on a fourth oil project in August. All of Guyana’s oil production is controlled by the ExxonMobil-led group.<\/p>\n
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Guyana is Latin America’s newest oil producer and in recent years \u200dhas become the region’s fifth-largest crude exporter after Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22929,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-22928","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Guyana's economy is set to grow 16.2% in 2026, slowing from 19.3% in 2025","published_date":"2026-01-27 07:24:37","news_description":"Guyana's economy is set to grow 16.2% in 2026, slowing from 19.3% in 2025","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26061,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22928\/revisions\/26061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}