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The project seeks to provide additional benefits to communities where the project is engaged. For example, we employ residents of these communities to do planting and maintenance work and several residents have been employed as rangers.
Further, there is a component of the project that supports community development through cooperative groups from the communities in micro-enterprise agro-processing projects. The article provides a good description of these projects. The Mangrove Project is proud of the accomplishments of these groups. We will continue to support them with the budget that was set aside for this purpose. I made this very clear. However, I made it clear that the Mangrove Project remains primarily a mangrove restoration initiative and cannot be distracted by expansion of the other activities that are part of the project. I made it very clear that I will remain faithful to the objectives of the project and any expansion in areas other than the mangrove restoration component would mean that we would be diverting from the objective of the project.
I was passionate in presenting my view that we must not lose focus of the main objective of this project and that while support to agro-processing groups around the country is a major priority of the Ministry of Agriculture, it is not the main objective of the Mangrove Project. That was so at the beginning and that continues to be the reality of the project at this time.
I am fully supportive of small enterprise development and cottage industries. The Mangrove Project in a small way provides some funding for development of agro-processing cooperatives in the mangrove communities. But this represents only a small amount of the resources the Government of Guyana has provided to promote and build the agro-processing industry in our country. Several agro-processing entities have received support through other micro-enterprise initiatives of the government and from various other sources.
The products from these entities are now being showcased in many shops and markets throughout Guyana and some are being exported and can be found on supermarket shelves in the Caribbean and North America. More than 500 products from about 50 agro-processors are now being marketed at the Guyana Shop on Robb Street. Among the those are products from mangrove groups. We are inviting everyone to visit the Guyana Shop and see and purchase these products.
Some of the agro-processors have invested their own money and others get token support from the government. All groups that receive support will receive support only for a period of time. The idea is that these groups must become self-supporting over a period of time. Financial support is only for a short period of time. Support with equipment and other commodities are start-up support and are not meant to be permanent. Thus, while we have supported a few groups with start-up during the formative years, the Ministry of Agriculture is pleased to see many more groups which are doing well without much support from a financial or equipment perspective. But all groups benefit from technical and marketing support and such support is intended to be continuous.
The Mangrove Restoration Project, therefore, will continue to retain as its main mandate the planting and preservation of mangrove forests. But we will continue the community development component of the project. However, there is no plan to divert from the original mandate and make the community development component the main objective.
