Business

The final report of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) for 2018 places Guyana fifth in the region for economic growth in the hemisphere behind Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Antigua and Barbuda. 

The Small Business Bureau (SBB) can anticipate a demarche from local contractors early in the new year in an effort to take advantage of the provision in the Small Business Act that allows small businesses registered with the Bureau to access twenty per cent of government contracts to undertake jobs valued at under thirty million dollars.

There is something to be said for the sheer tenacity of what, these days, is the remaining handful of traditional high street traders who, against seemingly insurmountable odds, have survived the otherwise  complete transformation of the country’s urban commercial culture, emerging intact though hardly unscathed and even retaining some of the old-fashioned customs associated with downtown trading of an earlier era. 

If it may still be commonplace to see large expanses of farming operations in countries like Guyana still relying on what, these days, is regarded as limited technology, investors in the sector have begun to grasp a better understanding of the role that drone technology can play in bolstering their agricultural pursuits. 

Concerns that tropical forest degradation is responsible for even more carbon losses than deforestation has prompted the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) to issue a call for investment in restoration through landscape approaches linked to supply chains, an undertaking which it says is critical to limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees centigrade.

Even as Venezuela’s economic circumstances grow more precarious, a trust representing holders of Venezuelan bonds has instituted legal proceedings in a New York federal court demanding payment on more than US$34 million in unpaid debt.

With the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department (GAFDD) facing ever increasing challenges in its quest to effectively monitor the entry of unauthorised foods and medicines into the country, local consumers could face more risks in the year  ahead in its quest  to fend off a fake medication industry estimated to be worth in excess of US$30 billion.

Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday December 27, 2018

Stock market updates

It is by no means accidental that the beleaguered administration of President Maduro in Venezuela has chosen this particular time frame to make menacing signals towards Guyana specifically – at least so it seems – to seek to disrupt this country’s move to finally begin to initiate its oil recovery efforts.

*Prices only represent the average Wholesale Farmgate and Retail Prices at the above mentioned markets and are NOT prices set by the Guyana MArketing Corportation or Ministry of Agriculture.

Chief Executive Officer of the Small Business Bureau, Dr Lowell Porter, on Tuesday confirmed that the way had been cleared for the full and effective implementation of the provision in the Small Business Act of 2004 for the allocation of 20% of government contracts to local small businesses.

The administration of the capital’s garbage disposal services would appear to be slipping deeper into a dysfunctional state with differences between City Hall and its two biggest garbage disposal service providers seemingly escalating following a meeting between the two sides on Wednesday.

Marcelle Allen’s permanent smile lights up the small, even somewhat cramped stall, the first as you enter the door of the Big Apple  on Robb Street, immediately west of the editorial offices of the Stabroek News.

The decision by some of the country’s commercial banks not to work with the state-run Small Business Bureau (SBB) in pursuit of its Micro and Small Enterprise Development (MSED) programme continues to be a disappointment to the institution but one over which it has no control, Chief Executive Officer Dr Lowell Porter has said.

For all the challenges that continue to be associated with finding adequate local markets for the volumes of fruit and vegetables produced by local farmers, the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) continues to undertake periodic initiatives to bring buyers and sellers from the coastal regions together.

Five years and counting… More than five years after alarm bells were first sounded over the size of the region’s annual food import bill, the yearly cost of bringing in food to the Caribbean – mostly from North America – remains anchored at US$4 billion.

The new Guyana Marketing Corportation has agreed to provide us with the above information which we will publish on a weekly basis subject to receipt.

Gold Prices for the three-day period ending Thursday December 20, 2018 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.