
Guyana’s Public debt skyrocketed last year, mounting to US$5,993 Billion, Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh has revealed.
During the budget presentation last Friday, Dr. Singh explained that external Public and Publicly guaranteed (PPG) debt reached US$2.2 billion by the end of 2024, while domestic PPG debt rose to US$3.7 billion.
At mid year, the country’s, external PPG debt stood at US$1.9 billion, and domestic PPG debt was recorded at US$3.1 billion during the same period.
“Notwithstanding our transformative development agenda, debt has remained sustainable. Government remains resolutely committed to our objective of mobilising development financing within prudent cost and risk parameters. Against this backdrop, Guyana’s total public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) debt amounted to US$5,993.8 million at the end of 2024, mainly on account of net inflows from our external and domestic creditors”.
But despite the increase in borrowing and spending last year, the Finance Minister said that over the last four years the ratio of total PPG debt-to-GDP fell by more than 20 percentage points, from 47.4 percent at the end of 2020 to 24.3 percent at the end of 2024.
“This provides clear indication of a marked improvement in Guyana’s capacity to maintain public debt into the future, without the need for large fiscal adjustments, and places Guyana in the position of having one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios worldwide. Indeed, the latest available statistics rank Guyana as having the second lowest debt-to-GDP ratio within the Western Hemisphere in 2024.

The Finance Minister explained that debts from external creditors in 2024 were mainly associated with major infrastructural works like the East Coast Road Improvement project, the East Bank-East Coast Road Linkage Project, and the New Demerara River Bridge Project as healthcare projects like the establishment of 6 Regional Hospitals, a Pediatric and Maternal Hospital and a new hospital complex in New Amsterdam; as well as social protection programmes and the procurement of aircraft for military use, while the increase domestic debt was primarily due to issuances of new treasury bills, the Finance Minister said.
“Total debt service payments increased to US$196.1 million in 2024 from US$177.5 million in 2023, underpinned by higher debt service payments to external creditors. External debt service rose to US$124.9 million from US$101.1 million, mainly the result of increased payments to bilateral and multilateral creditors. Conversely, domestic debt service contracted to US$71.2 million in 2024 from US$76.4 million in 2023,” Dr. Singh noted.
He said the decline was due to the completion of repayments under a government-guaranteed bond, issued by the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) in 2018, but transferred to the books of Central Government in 2020.
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