Business

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday February 18, 2021 Kitco is a Canadian company that buys and sells precious metals such as gold, copper and silver.

Aspiring oil-producing developing countries like Guyana would do well to pay close interest to last Friday’s decision by Britain’s Supreme Court that clears the way for a group of Nigerian farmers to sue the Anglo-Dutch oil company, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, over pollution in a region of Nigeria where the energy giant operates an oil recovery subsidiary.

With the United Nations-designated International Year of Fruits & Vegetables (IYFV) now in its second month, Guyana, widely regarded as the regional leader in the agricultural sector, is yet to make public its official programme of activities to mark the country’s participation in what is being celebrated as a global event.

Notwithstanding the challenges occasioned by the advent of COVID-19 during much of 2020, the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) is reporting an increase in the volume of its traditional agricultural exports with coconuts, pumpkin, watermelon, heart of palm, and eddo, leading the way.

Recent incidents suggest that Guyana has had to deal with incidents of both ‘importation’ of expired drugs and their use of such drugs in the public health system.

Even as Guyana continues to cast worried glances over its shoulder as the novel coronavirus continues to rage, evidence continues to surface of the emergence of opportunistic business initiatives across the country. 

More than five years after bursting into the global oil & gas spotlight following the discovery by a consortium led by the US oil giant ExxonMobil of an excess of 8 billion barrels of oil off the country’s coast, the Guyanese populace as a whole still know shockingly little about the industry as a whole or about when or how the country will be impacted by the returns from a sector which we are told will remove the country from the condition of impoverishment in which it has been caught fast for more than half a century.

The changing face of Guyana as a place to do business is continually being manifested in the types of goods and services offered by providers that are moving to ‘put down roots’ here.

Former US President Donald Trump may have disappeared noisily into history but the sword of Damocles which he has left over the head of the Maduro administration in Venezuela remains dangling menacingly and Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, appears in no hurry to remove it.

                                             Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday February 11, 2021

Sufficient time has elapsed, we believe, for the new government to provide a clear policy picture in relation to the level of support that the local small business community can anticipate from it in terms of initiatives that can help to strengthen the sector if only on account of the substantial job-creation and poverty alleviation weight that it carries.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 901’s trading results showed consideration of $13,605,378 from 76,114 shares traded in 38 transactions as compared to session 900’s trading results which showed consideration of $35,707,095 from 340,135 shares traded in 35 transactions.

No one with knowledge of the long-standing territorial controversy between Guyana and Venezuela is likely to be shocked over the recent seizure of two Guyanese fishing vessels by the Venezuelan Navy and the detention of their Guyanese crew in Guyana’s territorial waters late last month.

Prospects for an aggressive stepping up of the oil search in the Guyana/Suriname basin in a bid to further enhance the world-class oil discoveries made in that region in recent years now appear to loom large after the London-based multinational oil company, Tullow Oil, announced this week that it will be following what a February 1 Caribbean Business Report describes as “a year of relative inactivity” with the resumption of drilling activity in the basin in the region this year “in an area where it has already recorded one discovery of “high-quality crude offshore Guyana” with imminent commencement of “drilling of Goliathberg-Voltzberg North (GVN-1) exploration well in Block 47 in Suriname.”

The steady growth of the agro processing sub-sector from a modest and little-regarded pursuit used mostly to subsidize the incomes of poor families to what, in some instances, are, these days, significant investments in the manufacture of condiments from locally grown fruit and vegetables, is, arguably, one of the recent noteworthy successes in the agro-processing sector.

Latin America and the Caribbean have suffered what the UN World Economic Situation and Prospects Report (WESP) Report for 2021 has described as “an economic downturn of historic proportions” arising mostly out of the health crisis resulting from the onset of the novel coronavirus.

The January 2021 World Economic Outlook Report issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is projecting a 5.5% growth in the global economy this year, though its projection is underpinned by a distinct hedging of bets arising out of what is now believed to be fresh chameleon-like assaults from the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Eating fruits and vegetables (Third Instalment) Fruit and vegetables are a vital part of cuisines around the world.