Business

Interview  with GCCI President Kester Hutson GCCI President Kester Hutson speaks with the Stabroek Business Stabroek Business: Does this event this early in your presidency provide an indication that the GCCI will now be paying more attention to the promotion of small businesses, going forward?

Stabroek Business: Could you enlighten us on the history behind Small Business Week?

In the continually unfolding environment of local entrepreneurship where modest ‘hopefuls,’ no less than the more ambitious ones, seek earnestly to ‘cash in’ on the winds of change that appears to have drifted Guyana’s way on promises of an economic transformation driven by our protracted, now realized oil and gas ‘dream,’ Guyanese women are sending unmistakable signals that they are determined not to be left behind. 

Even the increasing robustness of the climate change lobby remains insufficient to push back the determination of the ‘big players’ in the global oil and gas industry, if some of the recent reports on the posture of the oil majors are anything to go by.

Up to this time it appears to be the case that Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries are making ‘heavy weather’ of trying to navigate their way out of the choppy waters’ of food insecurity communicated to the region by the World Bank/ Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) as far back as 2021 and at least twice thereafter, the two latter warnings coming over the past two years.

In a message intended as much for the West as for the English-speaking Caribbean, as a whole, Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, through her recent official visit to Venezuela, has unmistakably signaled that she intends to take her country’s foreign policy wherever its vital interests may lead it.

Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 1027’s trading results showed consideration of $1,863,115 from 2,903 shares traded in 13 transactions as compared to session 1026’s trading results, which showed consideration of $88,321,064 from 317,043 shares traded in 72 transactions.

For all the measures put in place by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to roll back the tide of food insecurity following the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) revelation late last year that 4.1 million people (or 57 percent of the region’s population) were facing food insecurity, concerns persist that the region is still some distance from being out of the woods on the issue.

MAG Elegance is an 8 year old small business enterprise in the creative arts sector owned by Lindener, Matoya Anecia Grant.

On July 6th, 2023, members of the Executive Management Commit-tee of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry met with representatives of Esso Explora-tion & Production Guyana Ltd.

The Stabroek Business welcomes the recent disclosure by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI) regarding the staging of a Small Business Week (July 21-29), whilst, simultaneously raising some issues which, we believe, are critical to ensuring that the event is impactful insofar as it redounds to the benefit of the small business community, as a whole.

The ground-breaking June 5-15 trade and investment mission to selected African countries by the Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Export) and the anticipated August 4 launch of the Africa EXIM Bank in Barbados points to an increasingly aggressive regional posture in the matter of upping the level of trade and economic ties with the African continent.

A recent article on climate change in the Caribbean published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that the island territories, collectively, are “the most exposed region to climate-related natural disasters,” and puts its “estimated adaptation investment needs” at more than $US 100 billion, an amount which the article says is “equal to about one-third of its (the region’s) annual economic output.”

By Raphael John-Lall (T&T Guardian) President of the Supermar-ket Association of T&T (SATT) Rajiv Diptee is warning of dire consequences like hunger and malnutrition if T&T and the rest of the region do not achieve food security in the short term.

Towards the end of June the Caribbean was made aware that its food security condition had realized something of an improvement, albeit a marginal one, compared with what we had been told back in August last year.

Take a walk through downtown George-town, – Shopping Malls, Pavements and just about any other convenient spaces and you are likely to see evidence of bustling entrepreneurial pursuits of all sorts.