– World Bank
WORLD Bank Representative, Mr. Renzo de la Riva Aguero said, Monday, that Guyana has taken a leadership role in the region to establish a public sector strategy for coping with systemic primary risk in the agriculture sector, particularly catastrophic events.

Speaking at the start of a three-day symposium on agriculture risk and insurance, at Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown, he said weather related risks have always been a threat to farmers’ livelihood and income generation opportunities, moreso today, in light of climate change and the vulnerability of the world’s resources.

Aguero said such developments have affected the stability of the agriculture sector in many countries, weakening their competitiveness, with respect to meeting obligations to international markets.

However, he noted that Guyana has improved its natural disaster mitigation programmes to provide more effective and timely responses to the most vulnerable segments of the population.

But the local agriculture sector is still exposed to adverse weather effects and those shortcomings will have to be addressed through various interventions.

Aguero lauded the interest shown by this country for the introduction of agriculture insurance as a risk management instrument but cautioned that the mechanism is not a panacea for increasing agricultural productivity.

He said, among other things, such scheme is a complementary mechanism that would allow governments in the region to identify the variation of weather risks for large and small agriculture producers.

And, in doing so, Aguero said the private financial sector will be able to promote investment, by designing suitable instruments to cater for the needs of their respective countries in the region.