MINISTER of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh, during the unveiling of the nation’s largest budgetary estimate of $208.8B, said that the PPP/C Government had been strengthened by an unswerving commitment in ensuring the safety of an environment that allowed economic growth and social development for 2012.

This has resulted in Guyana being able to experience its seventh consecutive year of economic growth, at 4.2 percent for 2012.
A major highlight of this year’s giant financial allocation was the recording of a balance of payment surplus of US$12M as at 2012. This is a significant recovery, given that at the end of 2011, there was a deficit of US$15M. This exponential improvement was influenced by an improvement in the capital account because of higher foreign direct investment.
The minister outlined that because of growth and export volumes, further assisted by “favourable price movements”, export earnings yielded US$1.5B. This represented an increase of 15%. There were similar positive trends reflected in the critical productive sectors.
The country’s major exports recorded significant increases in financial returns as a result of higher output. Beginning with sugar, that increased its export receipts to $132.1M or 7.1 % increase, primarily because of “favourable contract prices” which increased by 15.1% and outweighed a 6.9 % reduction in volume; rice, that earned US$196.2M. This commodity had a 9.4% in volume, and a 3.5% price increase.
Gold, the biggest foreign exchange earner, again performed well, netting US$716.9M, representing a 38.7% improvement over the previous year. Aiding this increase in earnings was a 6% “favourable price movement”, and a rise in export volume level of 30%.
Bauxite exports reported US$150.8M for an increase of 13.1%. There was an export volume increase of 22.8% that accounted for a 7.8% decline in export prices. Timber exports garnered US$39M. This was a “marginal decline” of 0.1% due to “lower production and efforts to further strengthen monitoring and enforcement within the sector”.
Continuing his budget outline, the minister reported an expansion in imports of US$2B or 11.7%. In this figure was an 8 % hike in the value of fuel and lubricants imported. There was an increase in other imports by 13.5%; non-fuel intermediate goods increasing by 12.8%; capital goods that included increases in imports of heavy equipment for industry and consumption goods, also increased by 11.7%.
Touching on net current transfers, this represented a 1.1% increase for US$419.2M, because of higher receipts of worker remittances. This effected a gain of 13.9% or US$469.3M. Also, there was an upward trend of net payment of services to US$232.1M as against US$145.4M, influenced by a US$94.7M increase in non-factor services because of higher transport costs and freight, in addition to “increased payments for business services.”
He emphasised that the “significant expansion of export earnings caused the current account deficit to widen marginally from US$372.2M to $394.8M.
Because of significant growth in foreign direct investment, a surplus of US$428.5M was gained on the capital account when compared to US$373.2M in 2011. This was a result of an increase in foreign direct investment in mining and quarrying, transport and telecommunication that accrued to an investment increase of 19% to US$293.7M in 2012.
These developments resulted in the Bank of Guyana, retaining the highest external reserves of US$862.2M in the history of the nation, or four months of imports.