The growth in the country’s economy, by 2 percent, in the first half of 2016, has been largely attributed to developments in the mining and quarrying sectors, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan told the media today during the presentation of the country’s mid- year report.
GINA said that for the first half of 2016, the mining and quarrying sectors grew by 65.7 percent when compared to a similar period in 2015. Gold rose 94.3 percent and bauxite by 2.9 percent for a similar period in 2015.
Jordan said other areas of the economy which revealed positive growth were other crops, which grew by 2 percent, livestock by 0.8 percent and fisheries by 2.1 percent.
Jordan said that there has been a review of the country’s projected economic growth for he year. This evaluation has seen projected growth being revised downwards to 4 percent from a previous 4.4 percent.
“This is more or less in line with what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted early this year, but is slightly down from our budgeted forecast of 4.4 percent. We are being conservative because we think performance in the other sectors might take us back to 4.4, but at this stage, we are revising growth rate to 4 percent for the rest of the year,” the minister said.
The modified projected growth was necessitated by declines in the agricultural sector which shrunk by 10 percent as a result of huge shortfalls in sugar, the Minister explained. “Sugar was down 30 percent, rice down 26.2 percent, forestry 13.1 percent,” Jordan stated.
As a result of the decline in rice and sugar production, the manufacturing sector shrunk by 14.1 percent, he said.
