Business

Overview Last week I started a short series on critical issues as it relates to our farmers and recommended major improvements in order for them to be able to strategically position themselves to improve their products, marketability and financial results.

Illegal “hookups” and other forms of electricity theft across the country are costing the Guyana Power anf Light Company (GPL) more than two and a half billion dollars in lost revenue annually and according to the company’s Chief Executive Officer Bharrat Dindyal stamping out a problem which he says is strangling the electricity generation sector is not as simple as it may appear.

The long-awaited report on the reform of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is now completed and while the details of its contents are yet to be made public, some of its key recommendations – including the recommendation that the age of retirement be upped from 60 to 65 are already known.

Stabroek Business has been informed by an aviation industry source that Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and Transport Minister Robeson Benn were passengers on the Air Services Ltd.

Notes 1 – Interim results 2 – Prospective EPS: earnings per share for 12 months period to the date the latest financials have been prepared.

Concerns over visitor safety in the wake of the recent attacks at Lusignan and Bartica by gunmen that left twenty-four people dead “have all but shut down several of the country’s interior nature resorts,” compounding an already difficult situation for the country’s tourism sector, according to Managing Director of the Roraima Group of Companies Captain Gerry Gouveia.

The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) has fingered a gang that is linked to the theft of transformers and other metal-based materials from its Sophia depot.

Overview: The low coastal plain represents the main area agricultural activity in Guyana which lies 1.5m-1.0m below sea level and extends from Pointe Playa to the Corentyne River.

Last week I had the immense pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone N

The monetary penalties imposed on a number of delinquent loggers by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) are permissible under existing forestry legislation and fall within the regulations of the Commission and operators in the country’s forestry sector are well aware of those regulations, according to GFC Commissioner James Singh.

An estimated twenty per cent of importers of foods into Guyana are in contravention of the law on account of their non-registration with the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department, a circumstance that raises concern that some of the country’s food imports may, through evasion of vital health and safety standards inspections, pose a threat to the health of consumers.

For some time now Director of the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department Ms.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone N

Newly appointed Head of Digicel’s marketing operations in Guyana Donovan White has refuted what he described as suggestions that the company’s business interests in the region are short term and that it is simply seeking a “quick score.”

The privately-run security firm United Associates Security and Domestic Services (UAS&DS) is reportedly on the verge of closure following the reallocation of state sites previously assigned to the company to two other companies.

Notes 1 – Interim results 2 – Prospective EPS: earnings per share for 12 months period to the date the latest financials have been prepared.

Chief Executive Officer of DIGICEL’s Guyana operations Mark Linehan has told Stabroek Business that last Sunday’s launch of the company’s GSM cellular service at Mahdia reflects the company’s conviction that the creation of a competitive environment in the telecommunications sector offers more choice to Guyanese consumers while providing greater opportunity for the economic advancement of the country.

Long before the February 12 on-line issue of The Economist magazine reported on the Lusignan massacre of January 26, countries around the world would have already learnt by one means or another of the dastardly act.

The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company is expecting that the much-anticipated talks with the Government of Guyana which are expected to conclude with the termination of the monopoly which the company now holds in the local telecommunications sector will proceed in an atmosphere of professionalism and cordiality.