Business

The Australian company Invictus Energy Ltd’s announcement earlier this week that it had made confirmed oil, gas and helium finds “with commercial viability” on its Mukuyu1 drill site onshore Zimbabwe, has added notably to the continent’s credentials as an energy producer and could even elevate it to the status of the first gas production in the Southern African country.

Pre-existing global food security challenges which have extended into 2023 may well become more acute as the year progresses on account of what the World Economic Forum says is a likely global rice shortage and an expectation that prices for one of the world’s most consumed foods will rise higher.

Governments in Latin America and the Caribbean are likely to have their hands filled promoting job creation, maintaining social expenditures and transfers and investing in education even as average growth for the region slows to 1.3% this year, according to a report emanating from a recently meeting of the World Economic Forum.

In pursuit of the realization of its economic ambition of transforming itself into a world class oil-producing country, Suriname, Guyana’s neighbour to the east has secured recent agreements with Middle East oil giant, Qatar, which will see the realization of two Production Sharing Agreements between the two countries.

Democratizing Art and leveling the playing field: Sade Barrow- Brown of Fine Art.GY

Even as the country seeks to maximize regional and international attention to the various investment and business opportunities available in the twin-island Republic, the government of Trinidad and Tobago is reporting an encouraging level of external attraction to its Trade and Business Information Portal, (TBIP) launched a year ago.

On the back of the various challenges which Venezuela’s oil and gas sector has had to face in recent years, not least the protracted United States embargo on the country’s oil exports and more recently the explosive corruption-related revelations in the sector, the acceleration of the country’s oil exports with the critical support of the US oil giant, Chevron, would appear to have hit a proverbial wall.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 1018’s trading results showed consideration of $1,325,848 from 1,637 shares traded in 11 transactions as compared to session 1017’s trading results, which showed consideration $19,441,232 from 53,219 shares traded in 40 transactions.

Just over a year ago, the World Food Programme (WFP) made the disturbing disclosure that an estimated 2.8 million people, or nearly 40 per cent of the population of the English-speaking Caribbean, had been dwelling in a condition of food insecurity.

Having earned a reputation as one of the standout services of its kind across coastal Guyana, the Mocha/Arcadia Farmers Market may well be facing the likelihood of ‘going under,’ the Farmers’ challenges associated with drainage and irrigation, plus the distracting standoff with government over the relocation issues facing some residents of the community, having brought the usually well-supported event to a halt.

It may well be that the atmosphere that obtains at Wakapau in the Pomeroon River has not only ‘preserved’ Aileen Charles, but has also imbued her with an appetite for pursuits which ‘lesser’ women, indeed, lesser persons, would shy away from.

If the originally stated purpose of the Government Technical Institute (GTI) was simply to provide training in “craft skills” there can be no question than that the institution that had once been identified with academic failures and school dropouts has long ‘slipped its (original) moorings” to occupy what is now widely regarded as a critical space on the local training landscape.

Consistent with the widely held view that relatively poor countries that find themselves sitting, often unexpectedly, on significant volumes of oil almost often slide into a condition of graft and corruption, the Venezuelan government would now appear to have officially embraced that truism, its National Assembly recently moving to unanimously approve a piece of legislation known as the Asset Forfeiture Act (AFA), which allows the authorities to confiscate assets obtained by corruption and use them to finance social programmes infrastructure and public services.

Authors Suneeta Kaimal, Susannah Fitzgerald, Matthieu Salomon Corruption has plagued many resource-rich countries for decades, yet a constellation of crises requires renewed focus on the fight against corruption in 2023.

In a region where government and the trade union movement are in a condition of extreme unfriendliness or, as the saying goes at ‘daggers’ drawn’, the administration of Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member country’s labour movement would appear to have taken a step in the direction of an enhanced understanding between government and trade unions with the signing on May day, this year, of what has been described A Declaration of Missions, Barbados.

With the consolidation of arrangements that seek to ensure that the maritime regime in the Caribbean is robust enough to meet regional challenges, going forward, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has disclosed that it will be undertaking the financing of consultancy services associated with a study that seeks to explore options for the creation of a maritime cargo service among Barbados, Grenada, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

With considerations that have to do with both food security and the profitability of the industry in mind, Guyana’s potentially lucrative seabob industry will benefit from a collaborative initiative (under the so-called FISH4ACP programme,) in support of the realization of an enhanced regime of safe and healthy work practices along the seabob value chain.