Guyana mulls buying stone from Canada

Last Updated on Friday, 30 December 2022, 17:22 by Denis Chabrol

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday announced that Guyana would soon have to import stone from Canada and other countries to avoid a shortage as the government fast-tracks its road construction and rehabilitation works in 2023.

“We might have to import from Canada and other places now so we need a lot of aggregate. Without that, the road programmes can’t continue,” he said.

Addressing a group of cash-grants-for-small business recipients at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, he described the possible shortage of crusher run and aggregate as “big problems”. He explained that Guyana’s stone production in 2023 is projected to be 600,000 tonnes while the demand is calculated at 6 million tonnes.

Mr Jagdeo said Guyana’s demand for stone could not be satisfied by neighbouring Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

In addition to planned road and drainage works in Georgetown from next year, he referred to the construction of several major roads and hotels in Guyana.

The 2022 National Budget states that most of the 11 quarries for which licences that had been issued in 2021 were expected to  come on stream by year-end, and each was expected to produce 150,000 to 200,000 metric tonnes per year.

Official figures show that Guyana produced 853,099 tonnes of stone in 2021.