Georgetown : The marginal growth that Guyana’s economy has benefited from over the past six years has come to an end and will begin to contract this year. This is according to the Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, who on Friday commenced the process of accounting for the nation’s finances and state of affairs economically when he said that although the inflation rate for 2011 was at an acceptable level it is projected to increase further.
The Finance Minister accounted to the nation that despite the prevailing global conditions particularly as it relates to the difficulties facing the Euro as well as the escalating oil prices, Guyana “achieved real growth in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 5.4 percent.
The Minister as he reported on the inflation rate said that it “remained within acceptable norms at 3.3 percent in 2011, notwithstanding the background of increases in global fuel prices.”
He said that this performance reflected Government's interventions to lower the taxes charged on fuel products and to provide financial support to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) to avoid full pass through of imported fuel price movement.
The Finance Minister however predicted that for 2012 the growth is projected to decline to a 4.1 per cent rate while inflation is projected to 4.6 per cent which the Minister attributed to the escalating oil prices.
The Finance Minister’s statements have since been denounced as a clever disguise using technical financial jargons to basically say that the “cost of living’ in Guyana will gradually increase during the course of the year.
