Business

President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), Rafeek Khan has told the Stabroek Business that the envisaged gas to shore project, part of the wider envisaged maximizing of the country’s oil and gas resources could represent a game-changing breakthrough for the country’s manufacturing sector, reaching to the very heart of one of the key issues that have affected manufacturing in Guyana.

As if the transformation that Guyana has undergone since the 2015 announcement by ExxonMobil that the country had made its first oil find has not been sufficiently impactful, since that time, the portents for the country’s oil and gas sector, going forward, are becoming increasingly pronounced, according to a December 31 Oil Price.com

Forever seemingly ahead of the rest of the regional ‘game’ in its thrust to promote Jamaica, the country’s Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) has sealed a deal with DHL Jamaica that will afford businesses in the country’s productive sector logistical support.

To fully appreciate the evolving circumstances that attend efforts to re-attach the United States’ oil major, Chevron, to the oil industry in Venezuela, it is necessary not just to follow events closely but to seek as far as possible, to secure information on not just events as they occur, but also to understand the context in which all of this is happening.

The use of mercury in artisanal mining to maximize gold recovery among small scale miners in parts of South America continues to attract international attention in the face of an absence of legal restraints and actual enforcement regimes.

Against the backdrop of a challenging year for the global energy sector arising primarily from the fallout from the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the attendant global oil and gas supply bottlenecks, the Trinidad and Tobago oil and gas sector more than held its own in 2022, according to the country’s Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young.

With training in STEM-related subjects having been tagged as being an important ‘ingredient’ in the overall local training curriculum if the country is to meet the skills requirements demanded by the country’s oil and gas industry, STEM Guyana Director Karen Abrams has tagged the support of the oil and gas sector, particularly Tullow Oil in providing “funding and resources for the organization” as it seeks to consolidate the work it has done over the years to development a robust local STEM curriculum.

Guyana may be riding high on the ‘feel good’ fallout from the swift transition from oil discovery to beginning to realize significant income from its now celebrated oil and gas industry, though, arguably not too far down the road, the ‘chickens’ associated with the country’s limited preparedness to effectively sustain one of the world’s most demanding economic sectors could come home to ‘roost’ to telling effect.

A recent document emanating from the Ministry of Agriculture titled ‘The Agriculture Sector – Achievements for 2022,’ alludes to some of the sectorial assignments with which the Ministry was associated in 2022.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 1,000’s trading results showed consideration of $59,871,724 from 246,836 shares traded in 61 transactions as compared to session 999’s trading results, which showed consideration of $2,545,195 from 7,937 shares traded in 13 transactions.

After many of the country’s small and medium scale farmers and agro processors had been ‘caught cold’ by the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021 the government, at the beginning of 2022, had held out prospects of a better year last year.

President of the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Guyana, Rowena Elliot, has told the Stabroek Business that while Guyanese businesswomen have, over time, arrived at a point where some of them are now “leading and owning sizeable businesses,” women are still “not quite where we want to be” in terms of the extent of their ascendancy up to this time.

Stabroek Business (SB) recently sat down with Rowena Elliot, the president of the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Guyana to discuss the issue of the ‘glass ceiling’ which is said to be inhibiting women’s upward mobility, especially in the corporate world, and the steps her organisation is taking to counter this and empower women in Guyana to achieve their full potential.

Time was when there had been a keen ‘rivalry’ between ‘worshipers’ of freshly cut flowers and artificial ones, a clash that pitted the ‘green fingers’ against the ‘crafty’ types.

For altogether understandable reasons, last Sunday’s usually widely popular Mocha Farmers Market was a shadow of its former self.

On the heels of the recent insistent warnings from within the region that the Caribbean’s food security status might not now be as reassuring as we might have imagined the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has given notice that countries in the region should brace themselves for what a Caribbean Media Corporation report says will be the “prolonged effects of external economic shocks in 2023, including for high food and fuel prices and rising international interest rates”.

Arguably the most significant drawback for Guyana from the country’s successive oil finds and projections on the issue of more deposits that lie ahead is the attention that the country has attracted from both potential investors seeking to benefit from the business opportunities that would appear to lie ahead as the country embarks on a multi-faceted developmental agenda.