– says he is ‘extremely pleased’ with Mid-Year Report that shows 5.9% growth
President Bharrat Jagdeo pointed to the positive fiscal results of the economy during the first half of 2011, to debunk assertions that the economy is being built by drug money.
He spoke at a press conference yesterday at the Office of the President where he addressed several issues that warranted his comment.

“I am extremely pleased with the Mid-Year Report on the economy…It is a great achievement for a country to keep a high level of growth in light of the global turmoil,” he said, pointing to the almost six percent growth for the first six months of the year.

“Our country for the past six or seven years has been on a significantly elevated growth trajectory and this has continued in the first half of this year. We had a 5.9 percent growth which is an enviable figure anywhere in the world. Our exports increased by 30 percent. We have had double digit growth in the mining sector,” he said.

“We had the largest rice crop ever in our history. We had the highest sugar production since 2004,” he said.

Inflation rate for the first half of the year was pegged at three percent. “Our revenue grew by over 13 percent. So these figures are testimony to the sound management of our economy and the dynamism that you see reflected today,” he said.

“We have always argued that a significant part of the progress that you see in the housing sector comes not only from bank loans, but also from equity that people are putting into these houses. If you listen to the opposition, you would think that every bit of progress that this country makes comes from narco-money…in fact they are saying it is a narco-economy. It is real people who are creating the wealth…the bauxite workers, the gold miners, the rice farmers, the people who work in services. They create value added and they create wealth,” the president said.

The report said that underlying this overall expansion in real gross domestic product in the first half of 2011 was growth in the non-sugar sectors of five percent, while the sugar sector contributed to the overall acceleration of growth.

As a result of this positive performance, and given the updated outlook for the various productive sectors, the economy is projected to grow by 5.1 percent in 2011. The report said that the non-sugar sector is projected to grow at 3.4 percent, revised upward from the original projection of 4.6 percent and 2.8 percent at the time of the budget of 2011. Export earnings expanded by 34.6 percent to US$533.1 million.

Export earnings from sugar increased by 32.4 percent to US$50.1 million, reflecting a 30.4 percent increase in quantity shipped to 99,738 tonnes.

The Mid-Year Report said that in the first half of 2011, the sugar industry showed tentative signs that the path to recovery had commenced. The sector returned a 2011 first crop of 106,871 tonnes, reflecting a 30.5 percent increase over the first crop of 2010, and the best first crop performance since 2004.

Rice continued its trend of successful first crops, with the 2011 first crop being 207,514 tonnes, 23 percent higher than at the corresponding period in 2010, and the highest first crop in the industry’s history.

The report said that rice export earnings expanded by 35.1 percent to US$92.6 million, mainly attributed to a 26.4 percent increase in average export price to US$551.4 per tonne, coupled with a 6.8 percent increase in export volume to 167,945 tonnes.

It said that the performance of the sector is attributable mainly to improvements in drainage and irrigation, as a result of government’s investments, the development of new and more tolerant rice strains, higher yields and higher acreage of paddy planted.