Courts Jamaica gets more furniture space
Courts retail furniture store in Jamaica has invested US$8 million in the expansion of its local distribution centre. The company’s Managing Director Dennis Harris says that by increasing the site’s capacity to handle store and process inventory by 50 per cent, Unicomer Jamaica will realize significant efficiency gains.
The latest addition increased the total square footage by 35 per cent to 175,000 square feet.
Unicomer in Jamaica has 29 Courts stores nationwide, but the company has seen most of its growth under its five-year-old Lucky Dollar brand, which now has 10 outlets.
Still nothing concrete on public/private sector summit
Details of the planned public/private sector economic summit originally billed for September and disclosed to this newspaper by Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Norman McLean several months ago remain scarce even as watchers of the country’s economy wonder aloud about just where relations between government and the private sector are going.
The announcement of the planned high level discourse on the economy between the country’s political leaders and its businessmen and women was made weeks after the new administration took office and was seemingly intended to send positive signals about the robustness of the much vaunted public/private sector partnership as the twin driver of the country’s economy.
Since then not a great deal has been heard about the planning for the summit which McLean had said was expected to involve Guyanese in the diaspora. While it had been disclosed at a routine briefing session between this newspaper and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) some weeks ago that the event remained on the front burner, GCCI President Lance Hinds was unable to provide any details of ongoing plans for the event. Immediately thereafter the Stabroek Business had been told that the summit had been shifted to November.
All of this has been taking place amidst a protracted interlude of what has become a condition of uncharacteristic quiet in public discourse between the public and private sectors. Government, meanwhile, has said nothing so far about the planned forum. Attempts by this newspaper to secure a private sector update have so far proven fruitless with no one seemingly inclined to go beyond saying that the event is still on the cards.
IMF’s World Economic Outlook not sanguine about region’s short-term growth prospects
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its most recent World Economic Outlook published earlier this week has lowered Guyana’s economic growth expectations by 0.6 percentage points to 3.2 per cent in 2015. Conversely, the Fund’s projection for 2016 growth for the country was increased by 0.5 percentage points to 4.9 per cent.
The Fund, meanwhile, has raised its forecast for nine of fifteen Caribbean countries, excluding Jamaica whose growth projection was lowered by 0.6 percentage points to 1.1 per cent in 2015. Jamaica’s expected growth for 2016 was also lowered by 0.1 percentage point to 2.1 per cent.
Overall, the multilateral lending agency increased its forecast for growth in the region by 0.1 percentage point to 3.8 per cent for this year while lowering its projection for 2016 growth by the same amount to 3.4 per cent.
Other countries in the Western Hemisphere are expected to see an increase in output next year, even though the report says that the deteriorating political environment in Brazil has dragged down business and consumer confidence. Investment there is declining rapidly and tightening macroeconomic policy is squeezing domestic demand.
The IMF report, meanwhile, projects that the troubled Venezuelan economy will experience a deep recession in 2015 and 2016 – contracting by 10 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively as a result of the sustained decline in oil prices since mid-2014. Inflation in Venezuela is projected to be well above 100 per cent this year.
Trinidad & Tobago, the IMF report says, is now projected to realize growth of one per cent and 1.4 per cent in the respective years.
IMF gives Barbados, Grenada, St Lucia pass mark for tourist arrivals
Barbados, Grenada and St Lucia recorded a five to 15 per cent rise in tourist arrivals in the first half of 2016 according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) recent World Economic Outlook. St Vincent and the Grenadines reported a slight decline in stopovers. The Fund reported that Jamaica’s increased tourism traffic helped to prop up a less than stable economy even though growth projections for the country have been downgraded.