Sugar production exceeds its 2015 target by 3,300 tons – Target 227,442 tons. Actual 230,760 tons.
Government documents processing improved. Passports for Diaspora residents now get passports within two months, a reduction of one month.
Child Care Protection Agency now examining all early childhood schools are care centres to ensure high standards of care for children.
Primary Health Centres to be improved at West Demerara, Suddie and Bartica. Health facilities and management found in degraded condition and work in improved `Health care delivery is advancing steadily.
Legal Training in Guyana – discussion by the Attorney General regarding the training of lawyers locally.
Guyana’s rising exchange rates may be blamed on a number of prevailing factors, including reduced proceeds from sugar and a steep drop of gold prices on the world market.
Over the past months, the exchange rate of Guyana dollar to the US climbed from $200 to US$1 to just over $210, a worrying trend for businesses and the administration. It is not likely to drift down in a hurry, analysts have said.
While banks were advertising trading on average between $204 and $209, businesses have been complaining of hardships in acquiring significant amounts. Continue reading →
In what is being regarded as a compromise, Europe – the country’s biggest bulk sugar customer – has agreed to end the quota system by 2017, giving Guyana just four years to fix the industry.
The decision was taken Wednesday June 26, 2013 during a critical meeting of the European Parliament, the EU Council of Ministers and the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium.
The EU has decided that 2017 is the deadline for ending its sugar quota.
It means that the forum would have disagreed with a January decision in which the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development voted to extend the sugar quotas, for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, to 2020.
Guyana is part of that ACP sugar-producing grouping that is affected. The sugar quota system stretched back to the 1970s. Continue reading →
With the country’s biggest earners being threatened with low prices and in one case poor production, Government on Friday admitted that it is worried about the situation and has been examining a number of measures to ease the possible impacts on the economy.
According to President Donald Ramotar, prices for gold on the world market have indeed impacted on buying by the state-owned Guyana Gold Board. The Head of State was responding to questions on the low rice and gold prices and on sugar production.
Gold production has been a major prop for the country’s economy in recent years raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign revenues as price climbed to over US$1,800 per ounce at one time. It was an area that attracted more than US$100M in local and foreign investments last year, officials say.
Last year, gold production reached a record breaking high of 438,645 ounces, in the absence of large scale producer Omai Gold. The commodity earned US$737M. Continue reading →
One down to earth description of an ‘optimist’ is a person who returns home, finds his back door broken into and thinks a surprise party has been arranged for him. The new Minister of Agriculture Dr. Leslie Ramsammy is definitely an optimist. Since assuming his portfolio a year ago he seems determined to ignore the reality on the ground as it relates to the Skeldon Sugar Modernisation Strategy (SSMS).
Last October, asked whether the US$200 million dollar investment – the largest in the history of the country – might be proving to be a ‘white elephant’, the Minister retorted indignantly: “”I don’t know…what is a white elephant, because this seems like a factory that is meeting its potential.” He could have turned to the ubiquitous (if sophomoric) Wikipedia which would have informed him:
“A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth. Continue reading →
