Business

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, not least Guyana, have long had to face challenges in matters of public accountability not least in areas pertaining to the administration of public funds.

In a country of incremental advances in media freedom arising through no effort on the part of government but rather on account of the gradual rolling out of an increased number of media houses and advancements in enabling technology, the various publics have, over time, become more vociferous, more empowered in ‘talking back’ to  government.

Trinidad and Tobago has preceded the rest of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in officially launching SheTrades, an initiative inaugurated by the International Trade Centre (ITC) that seeks to provide women entrepreneurs and women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with opportunities to become affiliated to a network and platform that connects them to markets globally.

In a region where doctors’ warnings and aggressive media-driven advice appear to have done little to bring a greater measure of wisdom to eating habits, a point may have been reached where Caribbean states may have to intervene directly to roll back the tide of non-communicable diseases which have reached a turning point with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Under protracted and extreme socio-economic pressure arising out of Washington’s measures to remove his government from office, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has wasted no time in welcoming the removal of the Trump administration from office in the United States. 

Hard-pressed local micro and small businesses in the agriculture and agro processing sector will benefit from a multi-faceted support package that will derive from the outcomes of a memorandum of understanding signed last Friday between the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) and the US-based United Guyana Diaspora Global Network (UGDGN).

If the recent revelations of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA) are anything to go by, the impact of COVID-19 will extend way beyond human casualties, impacting on the quality of human life for years to come.

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday November 12, 2020

 Stock Market Update GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone No 223-6175/6) reports that session 888’s trading results showed consideration of $33,981,524 from 242,748 shares traded in 22 transactions as compared to session 887’s trading results which showed consideration of $1,972,778 from 8,555 shares traded in 13 transactions.

Dependents in the Caribbean are going to have to gird their loins for tougher times ahead, a circumstance that they can justifiably blame on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on remittance flows to the region, according to an end of October World Bank assessment of how the phenomenon has affected the amounts of money likely to be sent home by mostly US-based migrant workers next year. 

What is almost certainly the first publicly advertised actual (as against virtual) event of its kind to take place in the capital for many months now, the Almond Tree Farmers Market will be staged over four consecutive Saturdays, commencing Saturday, November 14, and concluding on Saturday, December 5, at 229 Lance Gibbs Street, Queenstown, inside a gym that is now out of use on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For all the hype and hoopla that has traditionally attended Guyana’s reputation as a producer and exporter of food, a recent study across the country’s ten  administrative regions undertaken by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), suggests that challenges associated with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic have posed food availability challenges for some categories of Guyanese.

Industrial relations tensions arising out of adjustments to customary public service work schedules on account of the imponderables of the COVID-19 pandemic, are beginning to arise in some Caribbean territories.

The aid-related response to the travails of Caribbean countries by multilateral financial institutions (MFI) in the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19 and its attendant consequences up until now amounts to a failure in the region, a University of the West Indies lecturer told a public forum in Barbados last week.

A senior police officer has told the Stabroek Business that the Guyana Police Force is not “particularly happy” over the recent further reduction of the curfew hours since the adjusted policing duties put a greater strain on an “already stretched” Police Force.

Long accustomed to the pressures from the United States that date back to the Cold War, Cuba is girding its loins for the latest round of economic sanctions from Washington following the Trump administration’s announcement of fresh embargo stringencies that have effectively closed more than four hundred Western Union offices in Cuba.

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday November 05, 2020 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.