OREANDA-NEWS. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the economic growth in Guyana, a country with a population of 780 thousand people, which borders on Brazil and Venezuela in the north-eastern part of South America, will reach 86 % (in 2019, growth was 4.4 %). According to Bloomberg agency, this is 14 times higher than China’s expected growth rate.

The only English-speaking country in South America can get the unforeseen income from its offshore oil fields discovered in 2015. According to IMF estimates, Guyana’s annual gross domestic product, which nowadays stands at about 4 billion US dollars, can increase to about 15 billion dollars by 2024.

“The reason the IMF is projecting that is because Guyana has the highest amount of oil for each individual person of any country in the world,” Natalia Davies Hidalgo, a freelance Latin American analyst, told CNBC channel. According to her, in comparison with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ leader Saudi Arabia, which has approximately 1,900 barrels of marine oil reserves per person, Guyana has 3,900 barrels.

The start of oil production in 2020 will significantly improve the medium and long term prospects of Guyana. It is expected that production in the first quarter of 2020 will amount to an average of 102 thousand barrels per day, and by 2025 it will increase to 424 thousand per day.

In mid-September 2019, ExxonMobil and Tullow Oil announced the discovery of two new oil fields off the coast of Guyana. Earlier, 16 deposits were discovered in the country. ExxonMobil has been exploring on its shelf since 2015. According to Petroleum Argus agency, by 2025 ExxonMobil plans to produce more than 750 thousand barrels of oil per day on the Guyana shelf, it corresponds to 20 % of the current oil and gas production in the whole world.