Business

As this newspaper has said several times before, we have every reason to be exceedingly proud of the various small economic ventures in the agriculture, agro-processing and the creative sectors.

More than ten years ago, Aadil Baksh was handed the reins of leadership of Imam Bacchus & Sons, one of the most successful private sector business enterprises in the history of Essequibo.

Keen to ensure compliance by local manufacturers with high food safety standards as the novel coronavirus challenge seemingly grows increasingly more formidable, the Government Analyst-Food and Drugs Department (GA-FDD) on Saturday last undertook an inspection visit to the operations of the Morning Glory Rice Cereal Factory at Anna Regina to review the level of its adherence to the food safety protocols ahead of the facility being granted clearance to continue production beyond this year.

Not even the sense of doom and gloom that has descended on much of the world ever since the sudden, unannounced arrival of the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2019 has succeeded in diminishing what Junette Stuart believes is people’s innate desire to enjoy their lives.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) most recent Regional Economic Outlook excerpts which were reported in several Caribbean territories over last weekend have asserted that Latin America and the Caribbean have suffered considerably more than other regions, in both human and economic terms on account of the still raging COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet another initiative would appear to be underway to secure Guyana’s much sought-after increased market in the United States for the country’s agricultural and agro-produced goods through an information-sharing arrangement involving Guyanese public and private sector officials on the one hand, and US functionaries suitably positioned to aid the process, on the other.

Executive Director of the International Trade Centre (ITC), Pamela Coke-Hamilton, says the competitiveness of the Caribbean in terms of a destination for doing business is constrained by factors that include the high cost of electricity, though she singles out Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago as exceptions to that rule.

This week’s announcement that the CARICOM Competition Commission (CCC) has launched a market study to determine how persons in the region have been affected by flight disruptions arising out of the advent of COVID-19 could answer some questions about airline service standards that go beyond the pandemic itself.

Guyana is advocating an urgent re-think of what Foreign Minister Hugh Todd on Monday told the Thirty-eighth Session of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) are the “skewed criteria” which he said had been applied in “graduating” countries to middle-income status and which have now come back to haunt some “deserving countries from accessing much needed assistance to fight to overcome vulnerabilities, and in the process establish their resilience.”

Having regard to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and its global impact on the well-being of the Caribbean and the institutions that sustain the economies of the region, the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s (CARPHA) primary focus for much of this year has been on reducing the economic impact which the pandemic has had on the tourism-dependent countries of the region.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 886’s trading results showed consideration of $4,469,113 from 49,826 shares traded in 12 transactions as compared to session 885’s trading results which showed consideration of $6,525,349 from 31,027 shares traded in 17 transactions.

The environment of aplomb in which the Small Business Bureau was launched at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in October 2013 was always felt in some quarters to be a dead giveaway insofar as its likely success in bearing the weight of nurturing a robust small-business infrastructure was concerned.

Increasingly, stories that derive from journalistic ‘intrusions’ into the lives of Guyanese women, some of them shockingly young when account is taken of the extent of the responsibilities that they already bear, serve to remind that much of what gets said by officialdom on the subject of gender and opportunity amounts to no more than ‘old hat.’

The recent accreditation of the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department (GA-FDD) as a Conformity Assessment Body (CAB) to the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) 17020 and 17025 standards could mark a “game-changing development” for the productive sector in Guyana since the accreditation now equips the country to make critical and internationally recognised standards assessments of some types of local goods being produced here and targeting international markets.

The Head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is calling for the urgent implementation of active fiscal policies with a gender approach, as a specific part of the wider menu of measures to mitigate the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women.

From the era when ‘joints’ of ‘weed’ had to be smoked discreetly on the streets of Jamaica, the smokers keeping a watchful eye out for the long arm of the law, marijuana has worked its way up the ladder of ‘comfort’ substances, the production and marketing of the herb blossoming into an industry that will likely grow exponentially in the years ahead.

A fifteen-member group of international organisations concerned with ensuring that issues of forest conservation and the greening of economies remain at the heart of the human development agenda, last week made a high-profile international appeal for forests and tree landscapes to be brought to the centre of the global building back effort “for a more resilient and sustainable future.”

Navin Hansraj may be a computer engineer by training, though these days, his pursuits in agro-processing qualify him as the consummate hustler, one whose pursuit of accomplishment pushes him in several different directions.