LOCAL officials and stakeholders in the agricultural and food safety sectors were, on Monday,were praised for the high quality of their recommendations made to the European Union (EU)-funded project which will assist Guyana’s agricultural produce to gain access into regional and international markets.The occasion was a consultation in Guyana on the recently launched project, which also targets all other CARIFORUM countries as beneficiaries.

Held by the implementing agency — the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) — the consultation introduced the recently launched project named the Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) project earlier this week to local stakeholders, and also gave them the opportunity to identify local priorities to establish and institutionalize local SPS regimes which will guarantee exports of agricultural produce and fisheries products from this country into the countries in the EU, among other places, hassle free.

The favourable remarks on the local inputs was made by Dr. Robert Ahern, Manager of the IICA Agricultural Health and Food Safety Program (AHFSP), who was the main resource person at the consultation. He said: “In this EU project of capacity building, Guyana is in a much better position than some other CARIFORUM countries, because there are mechanisms already in place (in Guyana).

“There has been a lot of work done here on SPS. Guyana is well positioned to use the EU resources because of the investments that have already been made when it comes to the basic SPS capacities.”

He added: “We had a great stakeholder meeting here, and with respect to all of this information about where we are, where we would like to be, and how we would get there, the synthesis is going to be beneficial.”

The venue was the Woodbine Room of Cara Lodge in Quamina Street, Georgetown. The local stakeholders made recommendations for EU assistance for modern SPS regimes during working-group sessions.
These working-group sessions had been preceded by welcoming remarks made by Mr. Wilmot Garnett, IICA representative in Guyana, and by brief presentations from Mrs. June Masters, Statistics & Information Analyst for the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM); by Mrs. Nisa Surujbally, Programme Manager, Agriculture and Industry, CARICOM Secretariat; and by Mr. George Jarvis, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.

The working-group sessions had been preceded also by a presentation from Ms. Carol Thomas, Hemispheric Agricultural Health and Food Safety Specialist (HAHFSS) for IICA, who gave an overview of the project, titled: “Support to the Caribbean Forum of ACP States in the implementation of commitments undertaken under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA): SPS measures.”
Dr. Ahren disclosed that the visiting team intends to use the recommendations of the Guyanese officials and stakeholders to construct, over the next two months, a country plan for modernization of the SPS regimes in Guyana.

He said the responsible unit will send the draft to the Government of Guyana via the Ministry of Agriculture; and once there is agreement, the IICA would immediately begin work here, with the assistance of the local IICA Office.

The SPS project for Guyana and other CARIFORUM states is being implemented with a budget of 11.7 million Euros, and will last for 42 months.
Written By Clifford Stanley