The news that the construction sector remains closed – at least for the time being – to small businesses through the mechanism of the 20% ‘set aside’ provided for under the 2004 Small Business Act is, at the very least, disappointing, this newspaper’s appreciation of the importance of adherence to procedures, which is what it seems is blocking the access up until now, notwithstanding.
The Government Analyst-Food & Drugs Department’s (GAFDD) disclosure earlier this week about the quality of the safety protocols practised by eating houses in Regions Four and Six, though acutely disturbing is really not at all surprising.
In October last year the state-run Department of Public Information (DPI) announced that the Small Business Procurement Programme enshrined in the Small Business Act of 2004 and under which 20% of state contracts pertaining to jobs of up to G$30 million would have come into effect in January of this year.
There currently exists here in Guyana an uncanny and unkind coincidence between the attention that agro- processing has been attracting as an entrepreneurial option, particularly at the micro and small business level and what, up until now, has been a largely futile official battle to break open the protectionist fortresses that continue to place measly limits on access by our own agro-produce to regional markets.
However hard we contemplate the issue it is difficult to think of any single development in the post-independence history of Guyana that has impacted the national psyche in quite the manner that the May 2015 ExxonMobil oil discovery did.
It is no secret that our national safety and health record in the mining sector has been a far from exemplary one.
Invariably, when we conceptualize what one might call a ‘tourist package’ that Guyana can offer to visitors the options afforded by the beauty and adventure that can be derived from our far-flung interior locations are always ‘front and centre’ in that vision.
On the surface, at least, it is difficult to find fault with events like last Sunday’s UNCAPPED 1V at the Providence Stadium.
It has always been a policy position of the Government of Guyana that Guyanese residing in the diaspora should be encouraged to return home eventually, to resettle, to invest or both.
In the fullness of time the significance of last Monday’s meeting between President David Granger and the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, could go way beyond the time that the two spent together at State House and the relatively brief summary of the engagement released immediately thereafter.
Two days ago, at the the world’s leading Travel and Trade Show, the ITB Berlin, staving off stiff competition from a number of better-known international tourism destinations, Guyana was declared the #1 “Best of Ecotourism” destination in the world.
The near silence that has greeted the news regarding just where CARICOM’s food import bill has been headed recently is, to tell the truth not altogether surprising though, for a few very obvious reasons it is deeply disturbing.
There is a sense of contempt and callousness in the treatment customarily meted out to workers employed at the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc.
One of the positive elements in the recently released Report on last September’s Guyana Trade and Investment Exhibition (GUYTIE) staged at the Marriott Hotel jointly by the public and private sectors with the support of Caribbean Export is that it openly concedes that, for all sorts of reasons, it felt short of what might have been expected.
Two of the stories published in this issue of the Stabroek Business are concerned with the issue of minibuses, privately owned buses, which for many years have been serving as public transport.
2018 was a year of considerable achievement for the country’s agro processing sector.
Over a period of several years urban street vending has experienced a painstaking graduation process from the status of a nuisance that simply got into the way of the various other more mundane pursuits of city life to a facet of commerce that is recognized (there are those who would say tolerated) as what one might call ‘legitimate business,’ insofar as it has not only become legitimized in more ways than one but also given the fact that it provides a living for hundreds of urban, almost certainly mostly working class families..
We have been, as far as circumstances allow, deliberately monitoring the impact of the latest bout of jousting between City Hall and its two principal garbage disposal contractors if only because, first, we are aware of the particular vulnerabilities of the municipality in the wake of the revelations of the Report of the Kennard Commission of Inquiry.
There was a hollow ring to this week’s warning from the Government Analyst Food and Drugs Department (GAFDD) regarding the circulation of yet another fake drug, apparently an imitation of Daflon, which the Department says, is used for treating patients suffering from “chronic venous insufficiency” (CVI) and other ailments.
Part of the discourse on the subject of the implications of oil and the earnings to be derived therefrom for the future shape of the Guyana economy has had to do with the impact on the long-term future of those other sectors that have kept the country going until now and whether they will retain their sustainability once the various options associated with an ‘oil economy’ kick in fully.
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