Guyana’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) is es­ti­mat­ed to have grown by 49.7 per cent in the first half of 2024. This in­cludes oil and gas rev­enues.

The non-oil econ­o­my al­so saw growth, with an es­ti­mat­ed in­crease of 12.6 per cent, up from 11.7 per cent last year.

This was ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, who was speak­ing dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of Cit­i­zens Bank’s new Man­dela Branch here, on Fri­day.

He al­so not­ed that the con­struc­tion sec­tor has ex­pand­ed by an es­ti­mat­ed 43.7 per cent, and while recog­nis­ing that some sec­tors faced dif­fi­cul­ties ear­ly in the year, the gov­ern­ment demon­strat­ed its strat­e­gy to im­prove per­for­mance.

The pres­i­dent high­light­ed the bank­ing and fi­nan­cial sec­tor’s trans­for­ma­tion since 1992, iden­ti­fy­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in de­posits, as­sets and cred­it to the pri­vate sec­tor.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al waves of fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­forms led to a 44 per cent in­crease in cred­it to the pri­vate sec­tor from 2020 to 2023, trig­ger­ing a rip­ple ef­fect across var­i­ous sec­tors.

“The first wave of re­forms in­clud­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pe­ti­tion of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, poli­cies to strength­en the pru­den­tial frame­work and bank su­per­vi­sion, poli­cies to de­vel­op and deep­en fi­nan­cial mar­kets and the mod­erni­sa­tion of the pay­ment sys­tem,” Ali said.

Non-per­form­ing loans, which were at an all-time high in 2019, but re­duced in 2023, re­flect­ing a 145 per cent drop and a dras­ti­cal­ly im­proved ca­pac­i­ty of bor­row­ers to re­pay their debts.

The head of state al­so high­light­ed sev­er­al ini­tia­tives, such as low-in­ter­est rates for poul­try farm­ers and in­creased mort­gage ceil­ings, demon­strat­ing his gov­ern­ment’s ded­i­ca­tion to im­prov­ing ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing.

Last year, a $100 mil­lion loan agree­ment was al­so inked with Small Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Trust In­cor­po­rat­ed (SBDF) to pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es in its bid to im­prove ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing.

The gov­ern­ment al­so plans to up­date the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act (FIA) to mod­ernise Guyana’s bank­ing sec­tor and align it with in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing stan­dards.

The amend­ments will al­low for rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fices of in­ter­na­tion­al banks to show­case their fi­nan­cial prod­ucts, which will in turn stim­u­late for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and in­crease ac­cess to cred­it by lo­cal cor­po­rate bor­row­ers.

He laud­ed the in­stru­men­tal role that the coun­try’s two in­dige­nous banks – Cit­i­zens Bank and De­mer­ara Bank – have played in the de­vel­op­ment, trans­for­ma­tion and in­te­gra­tion of the econ­o­my.

“We saw the es­tab­lish­ment of a stock ex­change, the ex­pan­sion of bank branch­es through­out the coun­try, and no­table im­prove­ments, as I said, in the pay­ment sys­tem. we saw tremen­dous im­prove­ment in ac­cess to cred­it for the reg­u­lar man, and this is demon­strat­ed by the num­ber of homes we see be­ing con­struct­ed, small busi­ness­es, [and] com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty,”

He al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued in­no­va­tion as the work con­tin­ues to po­si­tion Guyana’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor as a key play­er in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Mean­while, Cit­i­zens Bank’s Man­dela Branch op­er­a­tions will be sup­port­ed by a staff com­ple­ment of 27, and promis­es seam­less, con­sis­tent de­liv­ery of prod­ucts and ser­vices.

It will al­so fea­ture a so­cial zone, of­fer­ing as­sis­tance, tu­to­ri­als and coach­ing to cus­tomers on how to utilise the bank’s dig­i­tal ser­vices.