First Lady to officiate at World Food Day Competition
First Lady Sandra Granger, Education Minister Dr Rupert Roopnaraine and Food and Agricul-ture Organization (FAO) Resi-dent Representative in Guyana Reuben Robertson will officiate at this year’s World Food Day Secondary Schools Home Economics Competition to be held on Wednesday October 21, at the Ministry of Education Ground, Carifesta Avenue, Georgetown.
Sandra Granger
The event is being staged by the FAO in collaboration with Ministry of Education.
A release from the FAO office in Guyana says that the competition seeks to allow secondary school students to showcase their talent in food and nutrition as well as address a number of key issues of relevance to national food security such as post-harvest processing of local produce, healthy lifestyles, and innovative ways of preparing locally produce foods.
This year’s event will focus on the promotion of root crops in Guyana,
READ Project boosts sheep, goat farmers’ income by 15-25%
The West Berbice Sheep and Goat Farmers Association, one of the local agricultural groups that benefited from the Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Development Project (READ) and which embraces villages extending from Profit to Rosignol, saw increased income by between 15 and 25 per cent on account of tools and equipment received from the project, Agriculture Minister Noel Holder said at last Sunday’s 8th Annual Livestock Exhibition.
World Bank upping its climate change funding
Already providing an average of US$10.3 billion annually in direct financing for climate change initiatives, the World Bank says it will increase climate change financing to US$29 billion annually to help countries tackle the impacts of climate change and move towards low-carbon growth. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said that climate change funding could rise from, 21 per cent of overall Bank funding to 28 per cent by 2020.
Jamaica urges banks to be wary with emerging medical marijuana sector
Jamaica’s Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister A.J. Nicholson is advocating strict vigilance on the part of financial institutions in dealing with the country’s emerging medical marijuana sector in order to remain within the ambit of drug and anti-money laundering laws. Nicholson wants the island’s financial institutions to tailor their rules of engagement with the sector “to be consistent with the amendments to the Dangerous Drugs Act.” They must, he says, “continue to be vigilant to ensure that funds which pass through their institutions are acquired only through regulated trade in cannabis and cannabis-related products.”
At the country’s Fourth annual Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Financing of Terrorism Conference on Monday, Nicholson alluded to the risk that monies from the trade of unregulated cannabis and related products could end up in the legitimate banking system.
Still no Go-Invest CEO
With the political administration having long sent signals that it will be pursuing an aggressive initiative to attract foreign investment towards economic growth, government is still to disclose who the new Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) will be.
The latest word from the Ministry of Business is that a new Chief Executive Officer is yet to be identified; news that has raised questions as to just when Go-Invest will get the kind of leadership that will finally kick start the entity’s high-profile role as the country’s key investment agency.
Government has signalled that it intends to retain Go-Invest in the frontline of the country’s investment drive by placing it under the Ministry of Business and naming Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin as Chairman of the entity’s Board of Directors, though investment watchers have told this newspaper that the entity would probably function better if it were to be given autonomy from direct ministerial control.
