Month: April 2018

Guyanese artistes and business owners will soon be able to rest easy, as the Government embarks on updating and enforcing the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) legislation. The IPR legislation allows creators to safeguard their work through patents, trademarks and copyrights, resulting in prevention of plagiarism, with the relevant laws as artillery should the need arise. In an attempt to get the consultation process started, a panel discussion was held by the US Embassy on Friday, with the focus being the importance of the IPR and how it would affect and…

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…go from $25B in 2014 to $1.9B in 2018 By Jarryl Bryan The Bank of Guyana’s latest Statement of Assets and Liabilities are out and it shows the bank’s total assets are on a slide, with several indices ranging from the bank’s gold holdings to its market securities showing reductions when compared to previous years. The statement was only recently released. According to the bank document, its total assets as of March 28, 2018, were $206.4 billion. This includes $1.9 billion in gold reserves, $82.1 billion in capital market securities…

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Roads in the Cuyuni/Mazaruni region will soon be tolled following the completion of various road projects. This is according to Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson who said the strategy will aid in the maintenance and sustainability of the infrastructure. “Soon we will be finished upgrading the roads. I would hope that we can work along with the region on this,” Minister Patterson is quoted as saying by the Department of Public Information. He made the comments upon conducting the inspection of the hinterland projects during his recent trip to the…

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Some three weeks after the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) had initially reported the “troubling development”, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has confirmed that a fake Identification (ID) card has surfaced in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne). According to Chairman of the elections regulations body, Justice James Patterson (ret’d), which has oversight for the distribution of national ID cards, this discovery may just be the “tip of the iceberg”. “The public is warned that this may also just be the beginning of mischief that is afoot, a fifth column lurking and…

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WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has launched the Retirement Savings Laboratory, a project that seeks to increase the number of people saving for retirement in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Washington-based financial institution said most workers in Latin America and the Caribbean – about 130 million people – are not saving for retirement, “which will make it difficult for them to have a good life when they reach old age, especially for low-income and independent workers.” The IDB said the main causes of under…

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While the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has expressed some level of satisfaction over the fact that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and various stakeholders are engaged in a process to update and sanitise the list of registered electors, the Party is also calling for due diligence to be exercised. One of the tasks undertaken by GECOM and stakeholders is to cleanse the list of deceased persons, based upon information generated by the General Registrar’s Office (GRO), which is responsible for the issuance of certificates of death. This is something the…

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The Bank of Guyana (BoG) has decided to stop minting the $1 coin, and this could see this currency, first introduced during 1996, being removed from circulation in a few years’ time. A notice from the BoG has said the decision to stop minting this coin is based on the general public’s reluctance to accept it, compounded by the low redemption rates and high production cost. A senior BoG official told Guyana Times that it is costing the bank four times more than the normal cost to produce one coin.…

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The Government has admitted that Guyana’s macro-economic outlook for 2017 turned out to be worse than projected, with a 2.1 growth rate being recorded. Finance Minister Winston Jordan made this admission during his first press conference for the year, held recently, at his Ministry. Revealing that the 2017 end of year economic report has been completed, he linked the dismal figures to sectors including sugar. Guyana’s last best growth rate was 5.2 per cent in 2013. World Bank records show Guyana’s growth rates in 2014 was 3.8 per cent, 2015…

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