Business Editorial

Raising our game: Playing host to the 2024 FAO Regional Conference

The announcement last week that Guyana will host the 38th FAO Regional Conference in 2024 is probably unsurprising, given, first, the country’s longstanding pre-eminent position in the region as a food-producing nation and secondly, the increasing attention that we now attract, internationally, on account of our new-found oil & gas wealth.

Creating a regional food security hub

The fact that the announcement earlier this month that Barbados will be working with Guyana in a bilateral effort to enhance the Caribbean island’s food security situation attracted minimal public comment across the region was hardly surprising given the outcomes of previous attempts at the level of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states to seek to improve the Caribbean’s   overall position.

What’s in it for small businesses?

Watching the comings and goings of potential investors, all reacting to the opportunities opened up by the country’s ‘oil bonanza’ and their interaction with Guyanese Local Content aspirants offers some interesting insights into the direction in which this country’s development trajectory might be heading.

Oil and imponderables

Back in 2015, it had taken little or no time after ExxonMobil’s first oil disclosure for public reactions to materialise.

The Russia/Ukraine conflict and Caribbean food security

With several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries now having openly admitted that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will impact – to an extent that is still unclear – on the food security of the region, the question arises once again as to whether the region, as a whole, does not continue to ‘play monopoly’ with its food security to an extent that seriously threatens to retard its development, pushing us even further behind much of the rest of the international community than we are at this time.

What to do about regional food security

One of the predictable developments that appears to have derived from the recently concluded Thirty-Third Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was the official ‘anointing’ of President Irfaan Ali as the ‘lead’ CARICOM Head on the issue of regional food security.

A strong hospitality sector

Back in November last year the government announced that it had created a “working committee” to address the issue of putting in place arrangements for the training of Guyanese in tourism–related disciplines.

Product displays must become profitable entrepreneurial pursuits

If it would be churlish not to acknowledge the limited exposure afforded small businesses in the agro-processing, food processing, art and craft and other sub-sectors that fall under the umbrella of what are loosely termed micro and small businesses, it would also be misleading to provide a sort of one-swallow-makes-a-summer assessment to the one-off Duty Free Shop staged at the Umana Yana to coincide with the high-profile 2022 International Energy Conference and Expo now winding down at the Marriott Hotel.

Food security: A mark of the region’s collective failure

Against the backdrop of numerous un-kept promises by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government, over several decades, to seriously ‘put heads together’ to find ways of reducing the volumes of our extra-regional food imports, the region continues to witness a continual climb in its food import bill.

Risks, threats and opportunities

We in Guyana would know by now that the oil and gas industry, like so many other phenomenon, can be a mixed blessing, even though, as a country, we are still well adrift of an accumulation of knowledge sufficient to understand all of the quirks of what can be a profound and multi-faceted transformative experience for countries possessed of the resources in question..

The Laparkan wharf fire

From everything that this newspaper has been able to learn about the recent fire at the Laparkan Lombard Street wharf, a very senior state agency official has apparently gone on record as saying that at the time of the fire highly flammable chemicals were being stored in the bond where, apparently, the fire started.

We simply must turn this absurd political corner

It is by no means the most uplifting of pursuits to zero in on every seemingly well-intentioned initiative undertaken by government and to shovel criticisms at those without seeking, first, to probe their virtues without passing verdict, one way or another.

Guyana’s tourism product – Are we really ready?

For all the ‘notable achievements’ of the country’s tourism industry recorded in 2021 as outlined by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) in its yearend review, there can still be no disputing the fact that insofar as the national ambition of developing the key sectors of the country’s economy is concerned, the ‘tourism industry’ occupies a less than prominent position on the ‘food chain’.

Hoping that history will prove us wrong

The recent outburst of fretfulness by the World Bank over what it says is the problem of governments seeking to “unfairly determine the winners of government contracts, with awards favouring friends, relatives, or business associates of government officials” (and which is reported in this issue of the Stabroek Business), came shortly before a revelation emanating from the Office of the Auditor General here in Guyana regarding a particularly outrageous instance of seeming manipulation of the state tender process in a manner that appeared to bend over backwards in favour of an un-named contractor.

Our marginalised hinterland communities

If there has been, in recent weeks, an editorial preoccupation on the part of the Stabroek Business pertaining to the hinterland, more particularly, coverage of some of the socio-economic currents in Region Nine, that is to say Lethem and some of its satellite communities, that is because the underdevelopment of the hinterland and the marginalisation of its communities continue to be serious fault lines in the country’s overall governance structure. 

Intra-regional trade

Observers of what, up to this time, have been largely fruitless efforts to forge a regional food security pact that can, among other things, reduce expenditure on extra-regional food imports whilst upgrading the nutritional quality of the region’s food intake, may well be wondering whether the contribution made by President Irfaan Ali at the recent Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association (TTMA) President’s Dinner and Award Ceremony will do anything to advance the process of regional food security or whether it will simply join the plethora of high-sounding pronouncements that have been made on the issue over the years.

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