Business

A critical leadership role The current global food crisis and the need for an urgent and energetic CARICOM response that seeks to address regional food security underscores the critical importance of Guyana’s agricultural sector to the region’s capacity to feed itself.

(Rawle Lucas is a Guyanese-born Certified Public Accountant and Assistant Vice President of the Lending Services Division.

Little movement on recommendations Delays in moving ahead with some of the critical recommendations contained in the Report of the National Insurance Reform Committee could seriously affect the future viability of the Scheme, according to a source close to the Scheme.

GASCI Summary of Financials Session 255 May 28, 2008  Notes 1 – Interim results 2 – Prospective EPS: earnings per share for 12 months period to the date the latest financials have been prepared.

               GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 255’s trading results showed consideration of $1,321,280 from 61,608 shares traded in 8 transactions as compared to session 254 which showed consideration of $1,603,325 from 85,396 shares traded in 20 transactions. 

The United States-funded Guyana HIV/AIDS Reduction and Prevention Project (USAID/GHARP) has taken a important step towards consolidating its coalition with the local private sector to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis by announcing the launch of the new Guyana Business Coalition for HIV/AIDS.

Problems in Amerindian communities being ignored – groups Prime Minister Samuel Hinds has told a mining forum that outrages such as the illegal gold operation on the Salbora road in Region Eight earlier this year might be blamed on the “frenzy” from high gold prices.

It is not a practice for the authorities – the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission or the Office of the Prime Minister – to  routinely bring to public attention the various environmentally unsound practices that persist in the far-flung mining locations across the vast interior of Guyana; and since journalists rarely if ever pay visits to these mining locations most of the information that reaches the media comes either from the various Amerindian organizations that have been fighting to curb the worst excesses of the delinquent miners or sometimes – off the record — from official (GGMC) sources, miners and the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association.

(Karen Abrams holds an MBA from UC San Francisco. She is a Marketing and Small Business Consultant in the US and Caribbean. 

After tax profits up to $106m last year from $48m in 2006 Sterling Products Ltd is seeking to develop an oil crop and a facility for manufacturing edible oil locally with the assistance of a CARICOM partner.

Head of the World Wildlife Fund secretariat in Guyana (WWF) Dr Patrick Williams has said that the international environmental body is prepared to support a visit to Jamaica by local gold mining officials to examine the laws, codes  and practices there associated with  the restoration of mined areas.

New body to raise the profile of Project Management profession here The Project Management sector in Guyana is expected to benefit from greater access to formal training and regional and international networking opportunities in what has come to be regarded as a key developmental discipline with the establishment here of a sub-committee of the Southern Caribbean Chapter of the United States-based Project Management Institute (PMI), the leading membership association for the project management profession.

  GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 254’s trading results showed consideration of $1,603,325 from 85,396 shares traded in 20 transactions as compared to session 253 which showed consideration of $2,285,000 from 138,822 shares traded in 9  transactions. 

GASCI Summary of Financials Session 254 May 19, 2008              Notes 1 – Interim results 2 – Prospective EPS: earnings per share for 12 months period to the date the latest financials have been prepared.

Guyana’s gold-mining industry is characterized by varying degrees of flagrant disregard for the law and operational practices that do serious damage to the environment and to the lives and livelihoods of the host communities, according to a well-informed mining sector source.

Dumping huge volumes of polluted tailings in Essequibo River Conditions of lawlessness and chaos are reportedly prevailing at a section of the former Omai Gold Mines Ltd (OMGL) mining site in the Essequibo river where ‘raiders’ have commandeered an area and are pursuing illegal gold mining activities with the knowledge of the authorities.

This newspaper continues to advocate that the investigation into the Customs/Fidelity fraud be allowed to run its course, guided unerringly by the commitment given by the President that the investigation will be thorough, that it will “dig deep,” that there will be no immunity for people who might wish to activate their political connections, that the architects of the fraud will get their just deserts and that the investigation will extend beyond the Fidelity fraud.