NEWS

Jwala: New $100 4 years late

Jwala Rambaran, former Central Bank governor, said the Government’s intended switch of the $100 notes to a polymer note was four years too late, and came after the Government had quashed his original plans to do just that. He spoke to Newsday on Thursday. “I had already had the $100 commissioned and ready to be distributed as a polymer note for December 2015,” Rambaran said. He explained, “The reason people move into polymer is that we could reduce the cost of printing. We would have notes that would last longer, and, more importantly, we would have notes that would be able to deal with the threat of counterfeiting. Read more here

Rush to change: New $100 bill within 14 days

A new poly­mer $100 bill will be in cir­cu­la­tion with­in the next two weeks. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to re­move the ex­ist­ing $100 bill and re­place it with a new hard­er to coun­ter­feit note. Gov­ern­ment wants this change to hap­pen be­fore the end of the year and in an ef­fort to achieve this Young said there would be sit­tings of the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment to­day and the Up­per House to­mor­row, with a view to amend­ing the Cen­tral Bank Act to re­duce the time giv­en to re­move a note from cir­cu­la­tion from three months to a min­i­mum of 14 days. Read more here

POLITICS

Law coming for citizens to have biodata number

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said legislation is coming where there will be a unique identification number for all citizens’ biodata (biographical data). He was contributing to debate on The Miscellaneous Provisions (Law Enforcement Officers) (Amendment) Bill in the Senate on Wednesday. He said the police under law are allowed to take fingerprints and photographs in respect of deportees and people at ports of entry. He reported there was an amendment in the bill to improve the law by adding that it is an offence to assault, obstruct or resist an officer in the exercise of his duties or a person assisting an officer. Read more here

UNC gets first Diego Martin alderman since 2010

Af­ter Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, the Op­po­si­tion UNC will now have an al­der­man in the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for the first time since 2010, but the UNC is blank­ing to­day’s swear­ing-in of coun­cil­lors in sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions. Both sets of de­vel­op­ments were con­firmed yes­ter­day. The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) yes­ter­day fi­nalised al­lo­ca­tion of al­der­men and wrote the PNM and UNC par­ties no­ti­fy­ing them of how many al­der­men each was as­signed. Read more here

BUSINESS

Central Bank expects better economic performance at end of 2019

The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT) lat­est Mon­e­tary Re­port has ex­plained that T&T’s econ­o­my can be fur­ther stim­u­lat­ed if there is an end to the in­ter­rup­tion of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. The re­port read: “eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty could im­prove in the lat­ter part of 2019 if there is a nor­mal­i­sa­tion of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion fol­low­ing tem­po­rary dis­rup­tions at mid-year.” The bank ex­pressed that the Min­istry of En­er­gy ex­pects a rise in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion to around 3.8 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (bcf/d), which would aid the re­ju­ve­na­tion of down­stream re­fin­ing and strength­en the pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals. Read more here

REGIONAL

Airbnb Scam - Tax-Dodging Villas Charging US$5,000

The Government is being urged to crack down on lavish guest houses and villas operating under the guise of Airbnb interests that are charging thousands of US dollars per night while dodging tax authorities. Wayne Cummings, a past president and council member of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), revealed that several large investors are charging as high as US$5,000 (J$670,000) per villa under the mask of Airbnb accommodations. According to Cummings, the Holness administration must act quickly to regulate the sector and protect the booming tourist industry, which is a major source of government revenue. Read more here

Tourism Month 2020 expected to be bigger and better

Director of the Department of Tourism (DoT), Donald Sinclair, has noted the importance of decentralised tourism industries, during a meeting, on Thursday, with tourism committees, from each of Guyana’s respective administrative regions. The committees did presentations on their accomplishments for Tourism Awareness Month last month and shared some of their future plans. At the forum, Sinclair also shared with the Regional Committees plans for 2020, where the department will be focusing on four key pillars under its “Regional Tourism Priorities 2020” plan, which will come under the headlines “Institutional Strengthening”, “Capacity Building”, “Product Strengthening” and “Market Links”. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

Hyderabad case: Police kill suspects in rape and murder of Indian vet

Indian police have shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a young female vet in Hyderabad last week. The men were in police detention and were taken back to the scene of the crime in the early hours of Friday. The suspects were shot when they tried to steal the officers' guns and escape, police told BBC Telugu. However, human rights organisations including Amnesty International have called for investigations to determine if these were extrajudicial killings. "Extrajudicial killings are not a solution to preventing rape," said Avinash Kumar, executive director of Amnesty International India. The 27-year-old rape victim's charred remains were discovered last Thursday - leading to outrage and protests over alleged police inaction. Read more here

Trump is so much closer to impeachment

Articles of impeachment -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved the House much closer to impeachment Thursday when she officially directed the Judiciary Committee to draw up articles of impeachment. (As if it wasn't already.) But her announcement all but guarantees that President Donald Trump will be impeached. This is happening, people. Read more here

6th December 2019

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