The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars will be available to any citizen of the South American country over the age of 18 with a valid passport or ID card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad will be eligible but must be in Guyana to collect the payment.
The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including young people who had not yet set up their own household, would miss out.
Announcing the new arrangement, Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, said: “Over the past week, thousands of Guyanese have engaged me and members of my cabinet, providing extremely favourable feedback on the measures announced last Thursday … several persons have indicated to my government the complications they foresee in the implementation of this much-welcomed benefit and the fear of being left out.”
The allocation, he added, “also addresses the many concerns of young people who may not yet have a family but thought … that they will not benefit from the household allocations because they were not yet the head of the household”.
With an in-country population of 800,000 and a diaspora of some 400,000, the country has been enjoying historic growth in its economy, which has tripled in size since it started crude oil extraction in late 2019.
Guyana’s GDP was for many years one of the lowest in the region, but after the 2015 discovery of a massive oil reserve off the country’s Atlantic coast, it has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.