The Hidden Exchange Rate Costing Guyanese Businesses 7% They Can’t See in the Budget

Georgetown — The Ministry of Finance’s Mid-Year Report 2026, tabled by Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, describes Guyana’s exchange rate position in a single, reassuring sentence: the official rate “remained stable” through the first half of the year. Look past that sentence, though, and the same paragraph contains a number that tells a very different story.

Section 3.37 of the document states that at the end of June 2026, “the official exchange rate of the Guyana dollar to the US dollar remained stable at $208.5,” unchanged from the position at the end of 2025. In the very next sentence, the report discloses that “the market mid-rate of the Guyana dollar to the US dollar moved from $220.6 to $223.7” over the same six months.

Put those two numbers side by side and the picture changes considerably. By June, the gap between the rate the government quotes as Guyana’s exchange rate and the rate at which Guyana dollars were actually changing hands had widened to roughly $15.20 — a spread of about 7.3 percent. And unlike the official rate, which the report says has not moved at all, the market rate kept climbing throughout the half-year.