(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) In spite of the challenges facing the agriculture sector in the Region, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) remained convinced that agriculture was an important contributor to rural development, employment creation and export earnings, and to the overall sustainable development of its Member States.
This was the view expressed Tuesday by Amb. Irwin LaRocque, Assistant Secretary-General Trade and Economic Integration at the CARICOM Secretariat who stressed that the involvement of the private sector was critical for the sector to continue to play its “significant role” in the Region’s development.
Amb. LaRocque was at the time speaking at the Private Sector Dialogue of the Fifth Hemispheric Ministerial and Fifteenth Regular Inter-American Board of Agriculture Meetings in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The Meetings are being held under the theme `Building Capacity for Enhancing Food Security and Rural Life in the Americas’. There were many opportunities available to the private sector to build a thriving agri-business sector, Amb. LaRocque pointed out.
“We only need to look at the food import bill, for example, to see where they lie. But we need the enabling environment to stimulate such investment,” he said. He referred to the work being undertaken to remove the constraints to agricultural development and underscored that public sector/private sector partnership was an essential element.
“In your discussions, you may want to consider how best to improve collaboration and coordination among agriculture stakeholders,” the Assistant Secretary-General said.
Earlier this year, the CARICOM Secretariat facilitated a consultation between the public and private sectors which was aimed at establishing stronger institutional collaboration for agri-business development. Heads of Government of CARICOM, at their 30th Meeting in Georgetown in July also considered ways of promoting agriculture as a competitive business sector and identified some areas for action. These included:
- Establishing an effective regime of sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, including the CARICOM Agriculture Health and Food Safety Agency (CAHFSA);
- Strengthening of research and development capacity within the Community;
- Developing a Regional Agriculture Market Information System
- Maintaining a reliable information platform to facilitate monitoring and evaluation of progress and outstanding needs in the sector;
- Developing appropriate policies and incentives to encourage a stronger agriculture private sector;
- Encouraging the youth to become more engaged in the sector.
- Addressing the inadequacy of transportation to better enable the export of agriculture products.
“Taken as a whole, these priority actions provide the necessary conditions for further private sector growth and development,” Amb. LaRocque said.
