Business

General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis has criticized the government for the “demonstrable lack of willingness on its part to bring the partially state-owned… Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) under control” in response to its “continued reign of terror” and its refusal to engage “the recognized union, the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU).”

Even as the Ministry of Business says it is continuing to create a reformed set of operational regulations for the scrap metal industry, the umbrella association for operators in the sector feels that the treatment that has been meted out to the industry gives rise to the view that it has now come to be regarded as a pariah.

There is absolutely no way that the authorities could have continued to countenance the relentless pillaging of the installations of the utility companies by thieves targeting metal infrastructure for vandalizing in order to make a living out of selling the metal.

 Business Cartoon

By Karen Abrams, MBA Technology Consultant   Two days ago a good friend of mine raised a very important question when she interviewed our STEM Robotics team for her television show in Guyana.

Having served in various capacities, in some instances for more than 15 years, more than 40 Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuco) workers attached to the Demerara Sugar Terminal find themselves stuck in low-paying jobs and saddled with what their Shop Stewards say is grossly sub-standard trade union representation that is making no effort to engage the company in the matter of improving their wages and conditions of work.

Gold Prices for the three-day period ending Thursday July 28, 2016Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

Dolly and Sarah Davson are members of a third-generation Guyanese family, which over the years has been making a living making and marketing an assortment of containers out of aluminium and galvanized metal.

Bilateral exchange between two of the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) more influential states, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica to settle long-outstanding and increasing acrimonious trade and immigration issues would appear to be accelerating in the wake of the recently concluded regional Heads of Government summit in Georgetown.

Stock market updates

(Prepared by the Guyana Marketing Corporation and published by Stabroek Business as a public service)*Prices only represent the average Wholesale Farmgate and Retail Prices at the above mentioned markets and are NOT prices set by the Guyana Marketing Corporation or Ministry of Agriculture.

Big is beautiful’ is a concept that has found its way into the mainstream of international fashion, opening up new and lucrative vistas in the multi-million-dollar clothing industry and simultaneously imbuing in ‘ample’ women a renewed sense of confidence that the world out there does not belong only to women for whom dress is driven by diet.

Private Sector Commission (PSC) believes that the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) is ill-equipped to effectively execute its mandate at this time and is unlikely to be able to do so unless it becomes free to attract its own international funding.

While the risk-averse nature of commercial banks’ lending policies have helped to keep the country’s financial system viable and sound in the face of banking crises in other countries, “rigid central bank restrictions” on commercial bank lending have limited expansion, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) says.

The recent announcement that Guyana will be hosting a high-profile coconut industry forum in October this year will probably not attract much sustained interest beyond the direct stakeholders in the industry though in his briefing on the forum and the industry as a whole provided to this newspaper, Mr Raymond Trotz, Chairman of the National Stakeholders Forum for Coconut Development hoped otherwise.

Business Cartoon

By David Falconer Three years into its introduction the local Credit Bureau seems set to reshape the country’s financial landscape, more particularly, to forever alter the procedures associated with lending.

What has come to be known as Parliament View Mall—the description could hardly be more inappropriate—is a hotbed of muted but ill-concealed resentment amongst the more than 100 vendors evicted from the Stabroek Market Square three months ago to their new, decidedly unappealing location.

Guyana’s first ever coconut festival, billed for October, is poised to do more than any previous initiative to raise awareness of the importance of the product, Chairman of the National Stakeholders Forum for Coconut Development Raymond Trotz has said.

As increasing numbers of cases of importation of counterfeit and/or expired goods, particularly milk, drugs, items of food and medical devices continue to show up on the local radar, a reliable Public Health Ministry source has told Stabroek Business that it is rife with corruption, adding that the authorities no longer appear to have “reliable control” over the integrity of several consignments of consumer goods imported into the country.