Business

Even as the respective countries in the Caribbean continue to take their own separate tilts at bemoaning what they regard as the distressing state in which much of the region’s agricultural sector finds itself, there still appears to be no discernable region-wide move to respond to what is regarded as a looming crisis.

Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday July 29, 2021

The Guyana business community has had little choice but to endure the debilitating strictures resulting from the impact of the coronavirus on various entrepreneurial pursuits.

As the prospects which oil and gas hold for the Guyana economy grow increasingly apparent, potential investors from both within and outside the region are casting a contemplating eye on Guyana as the biggest single potential investment target in the region and even in the hemisphere, at this time.

The economic challenges facing the Caribbean notwithstanding, there are indications that amongst global investors the region is still favoured among seekers of sound investments as havens for opportunistic citizenship-seekers.

By Arthur Deakin Historically, countries that discover large amounts of natural resources, such as oil or gold, tend to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund to manage their newfound wealth.

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have partnered to provide €30 million (US$36 million) in financing for Caribbean countries to purchase COVID-19 vaccines and make new healthcare investments.

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has set itself the formidable mission of halving poverty levels in the Caribbean within a time frame that better positions its borrowing member countries to realise the United Nations-set 2030 Social Development Goals (SDG).

Even as the economic implications of the Covid-19 pandemic lay bare the extent of the economic crisis that it is likely to leave behind for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the Economic Commission for Latin America is mounting a lobby for an extensive reform of the international financial system designed to address the challenges associated with the debt burden and the various other economic deformities that the pandemic is likely to leave behind.

All things being equal, the Caribbean could find itself on the way to recovery from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, though World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, Felipe Jaramillo, is concerned that another spike in infections could spell disaster for the region, particularly given what is now widely believed to be a number of variants that are now part of the equation.

Executive director of Caribbean Export Development Agency, Deodat Maharaj, says it is time the Caribbean and Africa translated their inextricable historical and cultural connections into business opportunities for their peoples.

The blanket of uncertainty that continues to hover over occasional interventions that seek to reassure that there is some reasonable time frame to the lifespan of the coronavirus pandemic is beginning to occupy more room in the psyche of the international community.

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday July 29, 2021 Kitco is a Canadian company that busy and sells precious metals such as gold copper and silver.

With the administration of United States President Joe Biden still showing no sign of a major change in policy in the matter of Washington’s sanctions that continue to significantly compromise the volumes of Venezuela’s oil exports, the administration of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro continues to slip the strictures by seeking new ways of both boosting the country’s oil production and its oil sales in an effort to restart the country’s beleaguered economy.

Guyana’s successive world class oil finds beginning back in May 2015 have propelled the country to the top of the list of Foreign Direct Investment recipients across the entire Caribbean Community (CARICOM) last year and second behind the Dominican Republic across the Caribbean and Latin America as a whole, according to a recently released assessment of FDI inflows into the region released earlier this month by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) has released some details of a plan to pilot the creation of a local web portal in support of significantly enhanced sharing of information and the refining of connectivity and communication aimed at linking local product and service providers with potential markets locally, regionally, and internationally.

Recently elected Chairman of the Essequibo Chamber of Commerce Aadil Baksh has told the Stabroek Business that numbered among his priorities as head of the Business Support Organization (BSO), is to create an environment in which key state institutions tasked with providing services that have to do with the well-being of the country’s business community are suitably responsive to the needs of the Essequibo business community.

Towards the end of last year, and having collaborated with colleagues in the authorship of a report on agri-food systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, Michael Morris, an expert on agriculture at the World Bank, gave an incisive interview on agricultural systems in the region, examining their strengths and weaknesses and providing a perspective on how those systems can be refined and improved to take account of better fulfilling its obligation to realising food security in the region and secondly, adopting systems that seek to mitigate the effects of climate change.