01Key Takeaways
- Guyana exported $10.81 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 52.08% from $22.56 billion in 2022, even though the country's oil output kept growing that year.
- Mineral fuels led every export category at 67.66% ($7.32 billion), the product of one of the world's fastest offshore oil buildouts.
- Trinidad and Tobago bought 17.61% of exports, worth $1.90 billion, Guyana's top single destination, narrowly ahead of the USA and Singapore.
- Guyana's export total has grown nearly seven-fold since 2019, even after the sharp 2023 pullback.
025-Year Trend
| Year | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | $1.6B | $5.2B | $8.7B | $22.6B | $10.8B |
03Top Export Markets (2023)
| Rank | Partner | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trinidad & Tobago | $1.9B | 17.6% |
| 2 | United States | $1.8B | 16.5% |
| 3 | Singapore | $1.6B | 15.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.0B | 9.3% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $831.6M | 7.7% |
| 6 | Panama | $519.1M | 4.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $497.6M | 4.6% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $481.5M | 4.5% |
| 9 | Italy | $327.7M | 3.0% |
| 10 | India | $313.4M | 2.9% |
04Top Export Categories (2023)
| Rank | Category | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mineral Fuels, Mineral Oils and Products of their Distillation; Bituminous Substances; Mineral Waxes | $7.3B | 67.7% |
| 2 | Railway or Tramway Locomotives, Rolling-Stock and parts thereof; Railway or Tramway Track Fixtures and Fittings and parts thereof; Mechanical (including Electro-Mechanical) Traffic Signalling Equipment of all kinds | $1.3B | 11.6% |
| 3 | Natural or Cultured Pearls, Precious or Semi-Precious Stones, Precious Metals, Metals Clad with Precious Metal, and Articles thereof; Imitation Jewellery; Coin | $589.6M | 5.5% |
| 4 | Ships, Boats and Floating Structures | $427.7M | 4.0% |
| 5 | Nuclear Reactors, Boilers, Machinery and Mechanical Appliances; Parts thereof | $407.1M | 3.8% |
| 6 | Cereals | $240.7M | 2.2% |
| 7 | Miscellaneous Chemical Products | $136.6M | 1.3% |
| 8 | Ores, Slag and Ash | $82.9M | 0.8% |
| 9 | Aircraft, Spacecraft and parts thereof | $62.3M | 0.6% |
| 10 | Beverages, Spirits and Vinegar | $60.4M | 0.6% |
05Trade Partner Map
06Analysis
An Export Total That Fell Even as Oil Output Kept Climbing
Guyana exported $10.81 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 52.08% from $22.56 billion the year before, one of the steepest single-year declines covered on this site. Mineral fuels led every category by an overwhelming margin, worth $7.32 billion, or 67.66% of the total. Guyana increased crude oil production by an annual average of 98,000 barrels per day from 2020 to 2023, the third-fastest growth rate among non-OPEC producers over that stretch. Output reached about 645,000 barrels per day, and Guyana surpassed Norway, China, Mexico, and Canada to become the world's third-largest non-OPEC oil supplier. That production growth continued right through 2023, which makes the export value's sharp drop that same year a genuine puzzle rather than a simple story of falling output. Oil prices did ease somewhat from 2022's crisis-driven highs, but not by nearly enough to explain a decline this large on their own.
Railway, tramway, and related transport equipment ranked a distant second at 11.64% ($1.26 billion), an unusually large figure for a country without a significant domestic rail network, and one that this fact sheet does not break down further. Natural and cultured pearls, precious stones, and precious metals took third at 5.45% ($589.56 million), tied to Guyana's long-running gold mining industry. Ships, boats, and floating structures added 3.96% ($427.70 million), and machinery and mechanical appliances contributed 3.77% ($407.09 million) that same year.
Cereals added 2.23% ($240.68 million), a category tied to Guyana's rice-growing coastal plain, one of the country's traditional agricultural strengths from before the oil era. Chemical products contributed 1.26% ($136.64 million), and ores, slag, and ash took 0.77% ($82.87 million), reflecting a smaller-scale mining sector that predates the offshore oil discoveries. Aircraft, spacecraft, and parts added 0.58% ($62.33 million), and beverages, spirits, and vinegar closed out the top ten at 0.56% ($60.41 million). Outside mineral fuels, no other category comes close to matching the scale of Guyana's oil export business, and the gap between the top category and everything beneath it is about as extreme as anywhere on this site.
Trading Hubs Dominate the Buyer List
Trinidad & Tobago bought 17.61% of Guyana's exports, worth $1.90 billion, the largest single destination. United States followed closely at 16.51% ($1.78 billion), and Singapore took 15.17% ($1.64 billion), rounding out a top three that made up 49.28% of total export value. Singapore's presence this high on the list is notable given the distance involved, and lines up with the city-state's role as one of the world's major crude oil trading and refining hubs.
Netherlands added 9.28% ($1.00 billion), another major European oil-trading and refining gateway centered on the port of Rotterdam. The United Kingdom contributed 7.69% ($831.60 million), and Panama took 4.80% ($519.11 million), a country whose canal makes it a natural transit point for tankers moving between the Atlantic and Pacific. Spain added 4.60% ($497.57 million), and the United Arab Emirates contributed 4.45% ($481.52 million), yet another global energy-trading center. Italy took 3.03% ($327.73 million), and India closed out the top ten at 2.90% ($313.40 million). Between them, this list reads less like a set of end consumers and more like a map of the world's major oil-trading waypoints.
A Boom That Arrived Almost Overnight
Guyana's export total has moved through one of the most dramatic five-year trajectories covered anywhere on this site. It stood at just $1.57 billion in 2019, the year before the country's offshore oil production began in earnest. It jumped to $5.20 billion in 2020, more than tripling in a single year despite the pandemic disrupting global trade almost everywhere else. It climbed further to $8.71 billion in 2021, then surged to $22.56 billion in 2022 as production ramped up alongside a global spike in energy prices.
The 2023 total of $10.81 billion, down 52.08% from that peak, still sits nearly seven times higher than the 2019 level, before offshore production began. The gap between rising physical output and falling recorded export value likely reflects how Guyana's oil gets attributed in international trade statistics. Much of the crude is lifted and sold by ExxonMobil and its partners under a production-sharing arrangement, rather than exported directly and uniformly by the Guyanese government from one year to the next. Whatever the precise mechanism, Guyana's headline export figures are likely to keep swinging by unusually wide margins for a country whose economy has transformed this fast, this recently.