Guyana Import Trade Data: $5.23B in 2023, Up 44.89%

A Crude Oil Giant That Imports All Its Own Fuel

Guyana imported $5.23 billion worth of goods in 2023, up 44.89% from $3.61 billion the year before. Mineral fuels led every category, worth $1.02 billion, or 19.54% of the total, a genuinely strange result for a country that has become one of the world's fastest-growing crude oil exporters. Guyana produces crude oil offshore but currently lacks any domestic refining capacity, forcing the country to import all the gasoline and diesel it consumes. The country's own president has described the resulting vulnerability bluntly, saying Guyana cannot have crude oil and not have security of supply, and has proposed a domestic refinery as part of a broader national energy strategy.

Machinery and mechanical appliances ranked a close second at 17.43% ($911.59 million), a figure that tracks closely with the scale of capital investment pouring into Guyana's offshore oil infrastructure. ExxonMobil and its partners brought a new floating production, storage, and offloading vessel, Prosperity, into operation at the Payara field in November 2023, part of a broader offshore development with a total investment in the billions of dollars. A single vessel like that, along with the drilling rigs, subsea equipment, and support ships needed to run it, generates enormous import demand in the year it arrives. Vehicles took third at 8.41% ($439.90 million), a category that spans everything from personal cars to heavy trucks serving the oil sector's logistics needs. Iron or steel articles added 6.24% ($326.59 million), both tied to the same construction boom reshaping Guyana's coast.

Ships, boats, and floating structures contributed 6.14% ($320.92 million), a category directly connected to vessels like the Prosperity FPSO and the broader offshore support fleet that services drilling and production operations far out at sea. Electrical machinery added 5.06% ($264.56 million), covering instrumentation and control systems used across both the oil sector and the wider economy. Rubber and articles thereof took 2.73% ($142.92 million), and salt, sulphur, and stone contributed 2.43% ($127.35 million), a category tied to Guyana's construction sector as new infrastructure gets built to support the growing economy. Plastics added 2.41% ($126.01 million), and optical, photographic, and medical instruments closed out the top ten at 2.12% ($110.93 million).

The USA Supplies Nearly a Third of Everything Guyana Imports

United States supplied 30.23% of Guyana's imports in 2023, worth $1.58 billion, by far the largest single source, consistent with American oil services firms and equipment suppliers playing a central role in the offshore buildout. China followed at 12.33% ($644.79 million), and Trinidad & Tobago took 11.96% ($625.50 million), rounding out a top three of suppliers that together made up 54.52% of total import value.

The Bahamas added 4.51% ($235.82 million), a notable figure for a country not typically known as a major goods exporter, possibly tied to shipping and offshore-services activity registered there rather than goods physically produced within its borders. The United Kingdom contributed 4.28% ($223.89 million), and Brazil took 3.90% ($204.18 million), a fellow South American economy with its own growing offshore oil sector. Japan added 3.89% ($203.34 million), and Suriname contributed 2.26% ($118.03 million), Guyana's immediate neighbor and another country with its own emerging offshore oil discoveries. Netherlands took 1.77% ($92.41 million), and India closed out the full top ten list at 1.64% ($85.63 million).

An Import Bill That Moves With the Pace of Oil Investment

Guyana's import total has swung sharply across this five-year window, though less dramatically than its export figures. It stood at $4.03 billion in 2019, then fell sharply to $2.24 billion in 2020 as the pandemic paused offshore construction activity worldwide and delayed shipments of specialized equipment. It rebounded to $4.37 billion in 2021, then eased to $3.61 billion in 2022 even as the export side of Guyana's economy was surging that same year, a divergence that illustrates how loosely the country's import and export totals can move relative to each other.

The 2023 total of $5.23 billion, up 44.89% year over year, marks the highest point in this five-year window. That surge was driven substantially by the wave of capital spending tied to the Payara development and its FPSO vessel, spending that shows up directly in the machinery, vehicles, and ships categories covered above. Guyana's import figures are likely to keep moving with the pace of major offshore project milestones for the foreseeable future. A single vessel purchase or drilling campaign can shift the national import total by a meaningful percentage. That kind of swing is simply what happens in an economy still this early in its transformation.