Business Editorial

Expressions of concern from the private sector over what it says is a scarcity of skills in key areas of the productive sector are nothing new.

The fact that there is as yet no evidence of a focused response from either the government or the private sector to the recently promulgated US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is reflective of a seeming indifference to a development, which has direct and potentially serious implications for the country’s manufacturing sector (though not exclusively) and particularly for aspiring small businesses within the sector.

The traditionally conservative nature of local umbrella business organisations sometimes makes sound and effective reporting on matters of business and the economy particularly challenging since issues and questions often arise outside the scope of information that is provided in the reports that are made public by those organisations.

In recent years, gold mining in Guyana has drawn attention to itself for more reasons than the fact that the industry has prospered on account of continually rising world market prices for gold.

Guyana is by no means the only country in the world where the utility entities and public facilities are targeted by thieves seeking to strip those installations of metal infrastructure in order to cash in on a lucrative global scrap metal industry.

New opportunities may lie on the horizon for Guyanese women in business following the establishment in March of a regional organization named Women Entrepreneurs (WEN), a US State Depart-ment-backed organization that is concerned with identifying resources available through international organizations with which to support the growth and development of women-run enterprises in the region.

In the section of his 2012 budget presentation that deals with small business, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh has signaled what now appears to be government’s readiness to activate the provisions of the Small Business Act.

There was no mistaking the sense of optimism and enthusiasm in the tone of Suriname Airways Guyana Representative Rudi Westerborg during the briefing which he gave this newspaper earlier this week on the airline’s new twice weekly service between Georgetown and Miami which commences on April 3.

Recent reports emanating from some Caricom countries would appear to suggest that a greater measure of official emphasis is now being paid to refocusing national attention on agriculture after a period during which it was felt that food security had, in some cases, been shifted to the back burner.

It took its own time coming but the operations of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) in which the Russian Aluminium giant RUSAL is the majority shareholder will finally come under close scrutiny in an arbitration exercise ordered by the Ministry of Labour.

There may well be no nexus between what Acting Police Commissioner Leroy Brummell had to say about interior crime at the Police Officers Conference earlier this week and the story carried in last Friday’s edition of the Stabroek Business on the same issue.

A certain measure of public sympathy – deriving from the fact that street vending is an honest alternative to unemployment – has always accrued to street vendors.

FW Raiffeisen who holds the distinction of having organized the first ever credit union in Germany some time during the nineteenth century is reported to have said: “Credit Unions must not confine themselves to granting loans.

Based on the number of complaints we continue to receive from consumers claiming to have bought goods, which, after a relatively short period of use, manifest defects or sometimes cease to function altogether, we believe that a case may well exist for even greater vigilance on the part of the local consumer protection authorities.

We appear over the years to have had a fair degree of difficulty in making up our minds as to whether we will embrace tourism as a high-profile sector and do what is necessary not only to burnish the image of the industry but to take it to another level as far as its contribution to the national economy is concerned.

Banks DIH Ltd is more than deserving of its considerable reputation as one of the flagship private sector enterprises in Guyana.

By clustering all of the various natural resources under a single ministry the Government of Guyana is sending a signal that it intends to lend much closer official attention to those sub-sectors.

Guyana’s small business sector can perhaps best be compared with an undernourished child that simply refuses to roll over and die even though the prospects for its growth and development and survival to a ripe old age are far from readily apparent.

Nothing should stand in the way of a country’s holding of general elections.

Last Monday’s discourses between some of the country’s business and political leaders and senior representatives of Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOB) may well have attracted a great deal less public attention than merited on account of the understandable preoccupation with next Monday’s general elections.