Guyana’s Economy Ranks Almost Last Among CARICOM Member States
The size of an economy is measured by the total value of all goods and services produced in a year – also called Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP per-person (also called GDP per-capita) is total GDP divided by the population. The value of all goods and services produced in Guyana in 2015 (the latest year for which comparable data is available) expressed on a per-person basis is US$4,127, according to data by the World Bank. This puts Guyana almost last, ahead of only Haiti, among CARICOM member states[1]. GDP per-person of US$4,127 is less than half the average of US$10,020 for all member states.[2]
Guyana’s GDP per-person is 18 percent of the Bahamas’s GDP per-person of almost US$23,000 – the highest GDP per-person among all member states. Likewise, Guyana’s GDP per-person is less than a quarter of Trinidad & Tobago’s GDP per-person of US$17,322. On the other hand, Guyana’s GDP per-person is more than five times that of Haiti’s GDP per-person of US$818, the lowest GDP per-person among all member states.
GDP per-person is a good economic indicator for comparing economies’ size by adjusting for differences in population. The main problem with this indicator, however, is it assumes equal distribution of wealth, thereby ignoring the presence of inequality. Also, GDP per-person does not offer any information on economic sectors or the structure of the economy.
While Guyana’s economy ranks almost last on a per-person basis, it is the 7th largest measured in total GDP among all member states. GDP totaled almost US$3.2 billion as of 2015.[3] The largest economy among all member states is Trinidad and Tobago of almost $24 billion, followed by Jamaica of US$14.3 billion, and the Bahamas of almost US$8.9 billion. The smallest economy among all member states is Dominica of slightly over half billion US dollars.
Notes
[1] The list of CARICOM member states does not Associate Members and Montserrat for which no data is available.
[2] World Bank Data
[3] Supra note 2.
