—Office of the Insurance Commission

“It would be before the end of the year…we are working on it,” says Assistant Commis-sioner Tracy Gibson at the Office of the Insurance Commission(OCI), with reference to the application for an insurance licence submitted by the Caricom General Insurance Company, formerly the Guyana Fire Life and General Insurance Company (GuyFlag).

In an interview on Thursday, Gibson remarked that the staff at the OCI was small, but she believed that the office would be able to conclude the licensing process for Caricom Insurance this year, which would mean that the application would have taken a year to process, since it was submitted around October last year.

An earlier application for an insurance licence in 2005 under Caricom’s then name of GuyFlag, saw it being denied.

Caricom General Insur-ance had challenged the OCI decision to refuse a licence in 2005 by going to the courts, but the court case was dropped last year, paving the way for them to re-apply for a licence under a new name.

In January, the OCI Commissioner Maria van Beek told this newspaper that a decision had been expected since December, but said that there had been a delay in the final report of the auditors who had visited Caricom Insurance.

Van Beek said at that time, that the OCI had concluded an inspection and special audit of the company, and the auditors’ final report was expected by January month-end. Gibson had later said that a decision was expected in August.

Caricom General Insur-ance, which also manages the Linden Economic Advance-ment Fund (LEAF), a Government of Guyana and European Union funded project, received its final tranche of $251M in March from the EC, after the EC took the decision to withhold the funds in 2005, following fraud allegations.  The fund is worth 1.9 million euros and began operations in January 2005; it is a component of the Linden Economic Development Programme (LEAP), that began operations in 2002, and which is worth $2B.