President Irfaan Ali presented the 2026 Mid-Year Report on 14 September: half-year growth of 33.3%, petroleum receipts revised to roughly $6.5 billion — 136.8% above budget — and a non-oil economy expanding at 10.1%, which is the only one of those figures that will still mean anything in 2035.
Guyana’s real GDP grew 33.3% in the first half of 2026, President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali told a press conference in Georgetown on Monday 14 September, presenting the statutory Mid-Year Report. The full-year forecast was raised to 20.8%, up from the 16.2% assumed when Budget 2026 was drafted. Oil and gas expanded 41.3%, mining and quarrying 40.7%, construction 24.7%, sugar 19.3%, forestry 15.4% and services 7.2%. Inflation stood at 4% at the end of June.
Production reached 163.3 million barrels in the half, against 115.7 million a year earlier — roughly 902,000 barrels a day. Crude export earnings came to $15.05 billion on a realised price averaging $92.5 a barrel, 28.9% above the same period in 2025. Projected 2026 deposits into the Natural Resource Fund were revised to about $6.5 billion — $5.97 billion of profit oil plus $508.1 million of royalties — 136.8% above the budget figure. The government expects to withdraw $2.3 billion this year, mainly for infrastructure.
Why it matters
The revision is not a price story and it is not a discovery story. It is a lifting-schedule story: the state now expects 84 of 326 cargoes rather than the 40 it budgeted for, and a fiscal projection that moves 136.8% on the timing of tankers can move the other way on the same mechanism. Guyana has built a budget around the least predictable variable in its own accounts. That is defensible while production is ramping; it becomes a governance problem the first year a lift slips across a December.
Which is why 10.1% is the line to watch. Non-oil growth is now in its sixth consecutive year of expansion, and it is the only figure that measures whether the windfall is being converted into an economy rather than a balance. The test is absorption — whether the construction sector, the labour market and the procurement system can turn $2.3 billion of withdrawals into assets rather than into prices. Inflation at 4% says that so far, they can. Every oil-rich frontier state has passed that test in year five and a fair number have failed it in year ten.
Sources: Department of Public Information, Guyana · Ministry of Finance 2026 Mid-Year Report · Guyana Times · Demerara Waves · Kaieteur News · Caribbean Journal