Business

Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, late in December, issued an invitation to the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises to begin to submit applications for funding under government’s Grant Fund Facility which is available to qualifying businesses to help build capacity and increase business competitiveness, a recent report in a section of the Port-of-Spain media says.

If few astute analysts of United States foreign policy are likely to bet that the passing into history of the Trump administration will take with it the pressures that sit like a hangman’s trap door beneath the Maduro administration in Venezuela they would do well to think again.

                                               Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday December 31, 2020

Whatever predictions and projections we might have as a nation for the year that begins today, these cannot fail to take account of the formidable imponderables with which we are confronted.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 895’s trading results showed consideration of $300,790,924 from 3,662,850 shares traded in 17 transactions as compared to session 894’s trading results which showed consideration of $10,785,489 from 109,563 shares traded in 28 transactions.

If neighbouring Suriname may not have altogether stolen the international spotlight from Guyana in the oil & gas industry on account of its own significant discoveries, it has done an impressive job of grabbing a sizeable share of global attention for itself as an influential player in South America’s new-found position as the hemisphere’s most lucrative hydrocarbon hunting ground.

A US$30.4 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan recently extended to Guyana is intended to add weight to the country’s efforts to seek to maintain minimum levels of quality of life for vulnerable persons amidst the welfare-related pressures brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nikesha Punch is one of those scores of emerging local creative souls in the Guyana manufacturing sector whose opportunities to ‘parade’ their products on the local market, are these days, constrained by the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A beleaguered Caribbean Airlines (CAL), whose long-standing yeoman service to the regional air transport industry is often forgotten amidst the slew of service-related criticisms that it has had to face in relatively recent years is still far from putting its problems behind it.

As the international community continues to be preoccupied with pushing back the scourge of the dreaded COVID-19 global pandemic, the local food service industry could be a critical cog in the wheel of limiting the further spread of the virus locally, Director of the Government Analyst-Food & Drugs Department (GA-FDD) Dr Marlon Cole, told the Stabroek Business earlier this week.

Buoyed by its new-found profile as the pick of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries as a potential regional investment haven, Guyana is preparing to entertain the presence of the highly regarded Jamaican investment company, NCB Capital Markets Ltd.

While there is no definitive word regarding a timeline for the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced this week that it will be mobilising US$1 billion to help countries in the region acquire and distribute the vaccine.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant additional strain that it has placed on the resources of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has not diminished the enthusiasm of the regional institution for throwing its support behind creative pursuits in the Caribbean.

Mar

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday December 24, 2020 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

While the appeal by the President of the Tourism & Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG), Mitra Ramkumar, for a reopening of the various entertainment spots was entirely predictable, even understandable, the point cannot be made too strongly that such consideration as is given to THAG’s appeal must be set against the objective conditions that obtain, that is to say, those conditions that have to do with the circumstance of the pandemic and the threat that it continues to pose, on the one hand and on the other, the situation in which the entertainment sector finds itself.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 894’s trading results showed consideration of $10,785,489 from 109,563 shares traded in 28 transactions as compared to session 893’s trading results which showed consideration of $58,269,672 from 662,937 shares traded in 26 transactions.

Fugro has received a contract award from Petronas for the provision of positioning services for an exploration programme in Block 52, according to Rigzone.