Business

A Guyanese brother and sister team is in the process of staking a place in the manufacturing sector, with a local wine-making industry that has proceeded in fits and starts, over the years.

The South American Coco Company may still be some distance away from the big leagues in what is now a rapidly expanding and, these days, is a global multi-million dollar industry—the manufacture and marketing of coconut byproducts—but Lois Rickford, proprietor of the two-year-old West Coast Berbice-based enterprise believes her business is headed in the right direction.

Up to late on Wednesday evening city traders were still awaiting the anticipated wave of Christmas shoppers which, many of them concede, has failed to materialize.

Planning is underway among businessmen in Berbice and Suriname for the staging of a major business summit between the two sides, which Upper Corentyne business officials say seeks to regularise trade and widen business relations between enterprises on both sides of the Corentyne River.

The Berbice Chamber of Commerce has listed sluggish paddy prices, the inability of GuySuCo to achieve its crop production targets and falling gold prices as being among the primary reasons for the disappointing performance of the economy of New Amsterdam and its environs this year.

By John Foley The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 594’s trading results showed consideration of $14,888,868 from 632,472 shares traded in 10 transactions as compared to session 593’s trading results, which showed consideration of $2,957,539 from 79,047 shares traded in 10 transactions.

Shaping up: Visitors to the Essequibo Coast are already offering salutary reviews of the still to be completed Rooster Fun Park and Resort at Onderneeming.

By Peter Hakim  Peter Hakim is president emeritus and senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy organization on Western Hemisphere affairs.

Business Cartoons

TOUGH TIMES: The New Amsterdam commercial area

On Saturday last the Stabroek News published a story about a group of potential investors from Trinidad and Tobago who had come to Guyana to scout local lands suitable for large-scale farming initiatives.

A young university trained couple earlier this year unveiled a $20 million investment, one of several launched by Guyanese entrepreneurs in recent years, that seeks to add value to local fruit whilst placing what appears to be yet another high-quality product on the local market.

As the local mining community contemplates the continual slide in the price of gold that resulted in the sector’s failure to reach its gold production target for the first time in several years, there are indications that recovery could hinge on other factors apart from an early hike in the gold price.

Five years ago during an interview with one of the country’s largest private sector enterprises, the Stabroek Business sought its Chief Executive Officer’s views regarding the greatest threat to the health of the business sector in Guyana.

Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Khurshid Sattaur can take no credit for frankness in his letter published in last Monday’s issue of the Stabroek News in which he appears to concede that some of his own officers are guilty of corrupt practices for which they are generously rewarded.

Come January, one of Guyana’s oldest private educational institutions turns 40 and its Chief Executive Officer James Bovell says that in its own right the institution has made a noteworthy contribution to the growth and development of both business and formal academic education in Guyana.