Business

A sharp reduction in the consumption of unhealthy foods, tobacco and alcohol use and diminished air pollution are among the priorities which the Caribbean must embrace urgently if the region is to shed the dubious distinction of having the highest mortality rate in the Americas resulting from cardiovascular disease, the Trinidad and Tobago-based Caribbean Public Health Association (CARPHA) is saying.

Kitco Market Data Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday May 20, 2021

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 915’s trading results showed consideration of $14,655,455 from 138,949 shares traded in 26 transactions as compared to session 914’s trading results which showed consideration of $3,718,273 from 22,456 shares traded in 21 transactions.

This is not the first occasion on which the Stabroek Business has made a pointed editorial comment on Guyana’s failure, up until now, to take any sort of initiative to speak of, to mark the United Nations-designated International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFV).

Fears expressed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic that the Caribbean, among other regions, would have to endure a protracted period of significantly reduced remittances proved unfounded as officially recorded remittance flows to low and middle income countries reached US$540 billion in 2020, reflecting a less than anticipated 1.6 per cent decline against the 2019 figure of $548 billion, according to the World Bank’s most recent Migration and Development Brief.

If the outcomes of a recent forum styled IMFBlog, convened by the International Monetary Fund to allow its staff and officials to exchange views on important issues are anything to go by the portents for a shorter term recovery from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic may well mask a gloomier scenario as the resurgence of the pandemic towards the end of last year threaten to erase prospects of an uneven recovery and add to the steep social and human costs which the malady has already inflicted in Latin America and the Caribbean.

You can take your pick from amongst the names by which this fruit/vegetable is known (and there are other names apart from the three mentioned above) though what is beyond doubt is that it is one of the more talked about fruit/vegetables in Guyana insofar as its health and nutritional properties are concerned.

Even as two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states – Guyana and Suriname – wait to reap the returns of their new-found oil and gas deposits, another member country, The Bahamas, continues to face a resolute environmental pushback from pressure groups that insist that the waters that have long been a major contributing factor to the country’s world-class tour-ism industry should not be despoiled by continued oil searches and perhaps, eventually, oil recovery.

The chance encounter between Leisa Gibson and Melba Lagadou at the Sonia Noel-staged Women in Business forum at the Pegasus Hotel in 2015 is now paying dividends for the two Guyanese businesswomen beyond anything that they might have expected when they first met each other.

With the inaccessibility of remote areas in parts of South and Central America rendering state jurisdiction an increasingly difficult challenge, governments in gold-producing countries of those regions continue to lack the tools to rein in small-scale illegal gold mining and the environmental havoc which these activities continue to inflict on the environment.

There has been, for many years, a continual global lobby for the Brazilian government to assume a far more militant posture in the matter of the destruction by artisanal miners of the country’s portion of the 5 million plus acres of Amazon rainforest.

Gold Prices for the three day period ending Thursday May 13, 2021

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 914’s trading results showed consideration of $3,718,273 from 22,456 shares traded in 21 transactions as compared to session 913’s trading results which showed consideration of $1,683,338 from 4,550 shares traded in 3 transactions.

Not many moons ago a pronouncement by a high official of government seeking to ‘sell’ Guyana’s preparedness to pay serious attention to expressions of interest by potential overseas investors would have been likely to encounter a healthy measure of skepticism.

The need to strike a balance trying to keep the COVID-19 pandemic at bay and continuing to maintain links with the rest of the world would appear to be on the minds of the authorities in Guyana. 

The Stabreok Business’ IYFV personality this week is Bourda Market Stall 7981 stallholder Robbiedatt more widely known as ‘Robbie,” currently in his third decade as a fruit Vendor.