Dear Editor,
There is a stark and troubling paradox in Guyana today: the country is experiencing explosive growth in oil wealth, yet human development remains alarmingly poor. This contradiction is not unique to Guyana. In academic circles, it is a well-documented phenomenon, usually analyzed through two influential frameworks: the Resource Curse Hypothesis and the Dutch Disease.
The Resource Curse Hypothesis, originally articulated by Richard Auty (1993) and later expanded by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner (1995), argues that countries rich in natural resources often grow more slowly than those with fewer resources. In their seminal study of global growth rates between 1971 and 1991, Sachs and Warner found compelling evidence that bureaucratic efficiency is strongly correlated with economic growth. They also observed that resource abundance in a single dominant sector tends to stifle innovation in other industries and undermines the broader industrialization of a country.
Consider this: Guyana currently has the fastest-growing economy in the world, yet it also possesses the worst maritime search-and-rescue capability in the entire Western Hemisphere. That is not a coincidence. It is the predictable consequence of placing all national bets on a single oil industry. This is not an argument against oil extraction; it is an argument against allowing that one sector to suffocate every other industry, leaving the non-oil economy in a state of stagnation and listlessness, unable to unleash its full potential.
The evidence is stark (see table below).
By 2025, oil accounted for approximately 88% of Guyana’s total exports, compared to 41% in 2020, the year the PPP took office. The IMF has repeatedly celebrated Guyana as the world’s fastest-growing economy, but this acclaim raises an uncomfortable question: who truly benefits from this oil wealth? Between 2020 and 2025, the oil companies operating in Guyana extracted US$41 billion in profits from the country’s offshore wells. For every dollar that flowed to Guyana, the companies took six dollars in profits after recovering their full operational costs.
Over the same five-year period, non-oil exports increased by just 54%, while oil exports grew thirty time more (1,573%). Even more striking, more than US$38 billion of those funds gathered from oil export proceeds never touched Guyanese soil. They were routed directly to bank accounts in New York, Texas and China, belonging to the parent companies of the consortium (Chevron/Hess, ExxonMobil and CNOOC). That is what we know about publicly. We can only speculate about what else may be hidden.
This narrative of the “fastest-growing economy” is, in large part, an illusion, a bookkeeping entry. The real measure of progress is the condition of the non-oil economy, which remains barely US$7.7 billion in total. That is the economy where most Guyanese live, work, and struggle. Families that once enjoyed three meals a day now find themselves hard-pressed to put two on the table, even as the country boasts of oil riches.
That is not a myth. That is the lived reality of Guyanese people. And it demands a fundamental rethinking of how we manage this country.
Yours faithfully,
Khemraj Harryram
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