Business

The rains may have brought other forms of business activity to a shuddering halt but for Ghamandi & Sons Enterprises it is an uncharacteristically busy period.

Intentions At a sitting of the National Assembly today, the country was likely to hear the views and vision of President Ramotar as he addresses the members of the august parliamentary institution. 

A three-decade battle by the popular Jamaican brand Grace Kennedy to have its canned and packaged foods become fixtures on the supermarket shelves of the major retail outlets in the United States is beginning to bear fruit according to a recent report on the news service Caribbean 360 website monitored by  this newspaper.

Local scrap metal dealers remain hopeful that their efforts to save the industry from extinction will bear some fruit when the government makes its now overdue latest pronouncement on whether or not there are sufficient safeguards in place to remove a ban on exports, which has been in place since April last year.

The projection by the World Tourism Organization that global tourist arrivals will reach a billion this year signals a dramatic and remarkably quick recovery for an industry that had been hard hit by the global economic crisis.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 446’s trading results showed consideration of $2,338,910 from 123,146 shares traded in 14 transactions as compared to session 445 which showed consideration of $2,167,147 from 128,043 shares traded in 8 transactions. 

Business Cartoons

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.

Strong performances by Guyana’s private sector-driven agriculture and gold mining sectors provided “significant support” for the country’s post-crisis economic recovery effort in 2011 even as other countries in the region continued to lag behind in their recovery pursuits, according to a January 31 release from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

Two months into the Donald Ramotar presidency, the Govern-ment of Guyana is yet to name a replacement for Manniram Prashad as Tourism Minister though President Donald Ramotar has sought to provide assurances that his government remains committed to the growth of the sector.

More than a quarter of a century after having seemingly been written off as a failed experiment, the vehicle of the cooperative as an economic option for changing lives, maximizing production, increasing employment levels and contributing meaningfully to the growth of the Guyana economy is in the process of being restored to the national agenda.

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.

Conflict Diamonds

Dedicated Sometime in the not too distant future, the Institute for Private Enterprise Development (IPED) will hold its 26th Annual General Meeting to discuss the performance of the organization over the last year, and most likely attend to other housekeeping matters. 

Banks DIH Ltd’s Chairman Clifford Reis told shareholders at the 56th Annual General Meeting last week that the company intends to focus on “a concerted export drive.”

Lack of financing and an effective local lobby as well as the high cost of taking advantage of potentially lucrative overseas markets continue to inhibit the local craft industry both as a source of secure employment for Guyanese and as a significant money-earner for the economy, according to Managing Director of Amazon Authentics, Irene Bacchus-Holder.

Pronouncements by Natural Resources Minister Robert Persaud that his ministry will seek to bring more order to the country’s natural resources sector includes an assertion that the administration intends to institute stronger monitoring measures to ensure that the country’s diamond exports comply with the requirements of the United Nations-sanctioned Kimberly Process poses a challenge that may well cause those difficulties confronting the gold industry to appear small by comparison.

Fork in the Road The elections of 2011 have brought Guyanese to yet another juncture of history along the path of nationhood. 

Four decades after migrating to the United States as a two-year-old Raj Ouellet has returned to Guyana at the urging of his mother.

The commitment given by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Robert Persaud to remove the deep-seated irregularities in the relationships between miners and state officials, one stakeholder says, will have to be “a tough and ruthless process” that will reveal just how “corrupt” the system has become and the inability of the state to properly monitor “the operational procedures” associated with the mining of gold.