The Student Loan Fund had enough cash to sustain the disbursement of loans to prospective University of Guyana (UG) students for the 2014/2015 academic year even though its annual allocation was caught in opposition budget cuts but its real problem is the whopping $7.3B in receivables
As has been stated by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) financial spokesman Carl Greenidge, government has been adding around $450 million to the fund since it was created in 1994.
There is no reason why local government elections should not be called as soon as possible aside from logistics issues, says Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Ramesh Persaud.
Digicel Guyana CEO Gregory Dean is optimistic that the Telecommuni-cations Bill will be passed by July thereby ending the more than 20-year-old monopoly held by GT&T and allowing it to provide additional telecommunications services, as well as improve the services it currently offers.
Originally intended to cost $425 million, Guyana’s Olympic standard pool was built at a cost of $581 million and questions have been raised about the price tag and the structural integrity of the main facility, which is now being retrofitted with a $38.7 million warm-up pool which critics say should have been built from the outset.
The Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) has urged countries in the region to step up countermeasures to protect themselves from financial risks emanating from Guyana as a result of the country’s failure to rectify deficiencies in its anti-money laundering legislation.
Lecturers and support staff at the University of Guyana (UG) are bracing for the possible discontinuation of some of the university’s programmes and non-renewal of some their contracts as the implications of the cutting of $450 million for student loans from the national budget begins to take form.
Caricom’s negotiations with Canada for a new trade agreement must take full account of the bloc’s interests, given the differences in size and levels of development, says Cari-com Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque.
– calls on minister to set dateAs various stakeholders, here and abroad, continue to press for local government elections, a group of young people, all of whom were not old enough to vote during the last such polls in 1994, have decided to add their voices to the endeavour.
Anti-money laundering law stalemate
Attorney General Anil Nandlall says that Cabinet will have to finally decide on opposition conditions for passage of the anti-laundering bill but he won’t recommend that the President assent to several rejected bills as is being sought by APNU and the AFC.
– following fiasco with local gov’t legislation
Parliament Office is now sending bills for assent directly to the Office of the President (OP), bypassing the traditional route that involved first referring them to the Attorney General’s Chambers for vetting.
Avoiding a showdown that could have triggered general elections, the National Assembly last evening passed an appropriation bill for government’s 2014 budget, after APNU and the AFC chopped $22.4 billion from the Finance Ministry’s planned capital expenditure on the last day of consideration of the estimates.
With some $9.3B of estimated expenditure already cut from government proposed $220B national budget, the Committee of Supply sub-committee mechanism suggested by House Speaker Raphael Trotman to facilitate negotiations on contentious estimates is not producing the intended results.
APNU MP Ronald Bulkan says budget 2014 is another tool to be used by central government to subvert and undermine local authorities so that it can micromanage these jurisdictions from the capital.
Giving Guyana its own law school has climbed higher on Cabinet’s list of priorities in light of the recent decision against Guyanese and other non-UWI law students gaining automatic admission to the Hugh Wooding Law School, says Presidential Advisor on Governance Gail Teixeira.
Government yesterday unveiled a $220 billion budget with a whopping $6.9 billion in power subsidies, $6 billion for the troubled sugar corporation, $500 million to clean up Georgetown, bumped up concessions for the elderly and parents but no new income tax relief.
While the major parties agree on one amendment to the anti-money laundering bill, key differences remain over the structure of the authority to oversee the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the appointing of its two top officers.
Students of the University of Guyana (UG) Law Faculty are still uncertain about future studies at the Hugh Wooding Law School despite Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall’s hopes that top graduates would continue to be allowed automatic entry.
The vast majority of the populace is not prepared for the holding of local government polls by August 1st, according to Minister in the Ministry of Local Government Norman Whittaker, who says to go ahead would result in the waste of a lot of money.
Guyana will miss another deadline for the updating of its anti-money laundering legislation after the Chief Parliamentary Counsel Cecil Dhurjon was unable to complete drafting APNU’s amendments in time for them to be presented with the completed bill for yesterday’s sitting of the National Assembly.
APNU’s newest front bencher, Shadow Local Government Minister Ronald Bulkan received a blistering baptism in the National Assembly last evening as he gave his presentation on the Local Authorities (Elections) (Amendment) Bill 2014, which seeks to postpone local government elections to December 1st 2014, or a date before.
