Your Excellency, President Bharrat Jagdeo
Distinguished Guest, Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO
Chairman of this Special COTED, Minister Vildo Marin of Belize
Ministers of Agriculture of other Member States
Officials and Representatives of Institutions
Colleagues of the CARICOM Secretariat
Representatives of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen.
The Secretary-General, who has been travelling attending a series of equally important meetings of the Community, has requested that I bring you his greetings and welcome you to the CARICOM Secretariat on his behalf.
While the impetus for calling this Twenty-First Special Meeting of the COTED for Agriculture at this time is largely in response to a request from the Director-General of the FAO to meet with the political directorate of the regional agricultural sector, we are very much aware of the dynamic nature of the sector and the need to maintain the momentum in following up the issues and events as they emerge.
In this regard we seize every opportunity to meet and consult and exchange views on these critical matters of agriculture that touch our lives.
The external trade issues of our major agricultural commodities such as in sugar and to some extent bananas which are being discussed in other arenas focus on negotiation strategies and Economic Partnership Agreements and these are important to us. Equally important are those initiatives designed to encourage and promote the growth and development of the sector in the region.
The CARICOM Secretariat is therefore pleased at the focus over the past two days on the agricultural sector, with meetings of the Core Group and COTED officials.
These preparatory meetings examined a range of issues germane to the productivity and eventual competitiveness of the Region’s agriculture and suggested a methodology for achieving this end for the attention of this Ministerial meeting. I wish to thank our Lead Head of Government for Agriculture, His Excellency President Jagdeo, for providing direction, through the Jagdeo Initiative: Strengthening Agriculture for Sustainable Growth and Development that could bring some early harvest in the achievement of our goals for the sector.
We are equally pleased at the level of co-operation and collaboration demonstrated by agricultural organisations such as the FAO and IICA. In particular, we see the approach being fostered by the FAO to ensure efficiency in investment via the concept of “bankable projects”. This is serving to complement the Jagdeo Initiative while assisting in augmenting the usually limited budget available to the sector by providing the conditions that could attract more private investment. We welcome the commitment of FAO and are happy that Dr. Diouf has been able to participate in the meeting.
This is the kind of collaboration we need if our prospects of a Single Market and Single Economy are to be realised. Maybe the time is not too distant when we can constructively engage all the stakeholders in Agriculture, including the farmers, in meetings such as these, where the technical experts and the policy-makers as well as the ones being affected by the policy decisions, can together formulate the priorities and actions necessary to resuscitate the industry and stop the out-migration.
The creation of a Single Economic Space, with its removal of barriers to trade in goods and services and the freedom of movement of the people of the Region, holds the potential for the solution of most of the problems facing us such as unemployment and poverty prevalence. Agriculture is no exception. Indeed access to each other’s resources of land and water could be equally a part of our Region’s Functional Co-operation Strategies as those we may have existing for Health and Education. We just need to put the respective institutional arrangements in place. As such, we have been focusing on related logistical issues, ranging from adequate regional transportation to adequate regional security.
Again, I welcome you and wish you a productive meeting.
