— says PM Mottley

EVEN as Heads of State of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have committed to implement systems to help reduce the region’s US$5B food-importation bill by 25 per cent by 2025, Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has opined that an improved supply chain and the removal of trade barriers are pivotal to achieving this goal.

PM Mottley made this statement on Friday while attending the Agri-Investment Forum and Expo at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.

She emphasised that there is need for an efficient supply chain that is safe and secure, and not necessarily one that is driven by imports. This, she believes, will make possible reduced costs of exporting among the CARICOM sister states.

Mottley noted that even while investments are being made to set up a Guyana – Barbados terminal that will facilitate the smooth movement of specific products, systems still need to be put in place to ensure smooth and efficient transportation to protect the investments of producers.

“Barriers have been significant. I mean, I think there are too many stories of containers of produce being left on ports to spoil and it’s happened in too many countries or restrictions because of all kinds of failure to comply with sanitary and phytosanitary conditions. We’ve said look, we need to be very practical now. We can’t move produce from country to country if people are going to lose their investment. No farmer is going to send up …a lot of limes and lemons to another Caribbean country to rot on the port.”

She stated that meetings are expected to be held with several financial institutions to make provisions for ready and affordable access to capital to assist state entities or private-sector individuals to expand production and undertake the logistics.

Prime Minister Mottley noted that so far a commitment has been made by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to take the lead along with other countries to be able to resolve transportation arrangements.

“The Caribbean Development Bank has agreed that it will take the lead along with other countries to be able to finally see how we can resolve this, [the transport arrangements], particularly for the movement of produce.”

She further stated that mechanisms are being put in place to assess the viability of air transport, especially for perishable goods.

Prime Minister Mottley added that discussions on the removal of trade barriers and improved supply chain will be further fleshed out at the Heads of Government meeting that is expected to be held within two months.

“In about two months between now and then and then immediately, possibly in public, that we can go and sit down without all of the fanfare, without all the frills and let’s attack the top barriers in the same way that President Ali has done for us… a clear framework to take the top 10 items that we want to be able to have the total capacity to produce within the region without importing, and we are hoping to do that in terms of industrial policy.”