— as CARICOM heads laud President Ali’s drive to transform agriculture in the region
A regional agriculture investment conference will be held in Guyana, in May, as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) takes decisive steps to reduce its US$5B food import bill by 25 per cent in the next five years (25 by 25).
This was disclosed by Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, during a media briefing at the 33rd Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM in Belize which concluded on Wednesday.
In responding to questions from reporters on how the region intends to achieve its ‘25 by 25’ agriculture target, PM Mottley said that the conference, which is slated to be held from May 19-May 21, is a necessary prerequisite to promote investments in the agriculture sector.
“Without money we won’t have the ability to help the farmers. The money from Republic Bank is effectively being offered to governments to help farmers; in some instances it will be State-led and in some instances, it will be private sector-led,” the Barbados Prime Minister said.
Given the presentations made by the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation (CPSO) at the conference, CARICOM heads are hopeful that private entities will jump on board with investments to help the region achieve its agriculture target.
“We hope that the private sector — the regional private sector — will also come to the table ready to make the decisions for investments that will allow us to achieve this target of 25 by 25.”
On a different note, PM Mottley noted that CARICOM is looking to explore a co-ordinated approach on local content for emerging industries to ensure that countries can set aside quotas for themselves.
“There is need for us to review the issue of local content and there is an open-ended committee of members states that will start to work very shortly,” she said, adding: “We are going to do the discussions among ourselves with a view to recommending to the full conference of heads, what the appropriate framework should be such that no one will be in breach for wanting to do that.”
Meanwhile, President Dr. Irfaan Ali has received praise from the various CARICOM heads of State for his efforts and plans to transform agriculture in the region.
During his presentation on Tuesday, President Ali had announced a US$100M (Guy$20.7B) Special Concessional Financing Package geared at helping to transform the sector.
The Head of State, who holds the responsibility for Agriculture, Agricultural Diversification and Food Security in CARICOM, outlined an action-oriented and solution-based proposal, aimed at reducing the region’s food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025.
President Ali addressed each country’s report of current and target commodities to achieve the 25 per cent reduction by 2025, detailing both constraints and actions needed.
He highlighted that coffee, cocoa, coconut, spices, hemp (industrial) and palm oil are high-value imports into CARICOM with potential for development in the region.
The President also reported that there had been concrete progress in access to financing for agriculture investment, financing through a facility called the CARICOM Sustainability Agriculture Credit Facility (the “Credit Facility”), using Republic Bank Limited as a lender.
