Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington says there needs to be a change in the region as regard investment in the agriculture sector as data has shown that when compared to other sectors agri-food investments are less active.
Carrington was speaking at the opening of the two-day Regional Agriculture Investment Forum at the International Convention Centre yesterday. The Secretary-General said that the less dynamic nature of investment in agricultural foods was due in part, to a generally unfavourable investment climate for agriculture relative to other economic sectors. He said the transformation of the sector would happen by diversifying agricultural production, intensifying agro-industrial development, expanding agri-businesses and generally conducting agricultural production on a market-oriented, internationally competitive and environmentally sound basis.
Though agriculture is now a global preoccupation because of increasing prices for food, Caricom had already begun to focus on it before the current situation of rising prices and the scarcity of food supplies. Carrington said agriculture has been a critical item on the agenda of meetings of the Conference of Heads of Government in recent years. He said too the Lead Head of Government with responsibility for Agriculture, President Bharrat Jagdeo, has taken time to ensure and facilitate increased commitment to removing the key binding constraints to the development and competitiveness of agriculture in the region. However, Carrington noted too that there have been market-driven investments, more obviously in the medium-to-large scale operations, such as flour mill expansion, paper and ethanol from sugar cane in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and other member states of the region; poultry in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, T&T; anthurium research and expanded production in T&T; greenhouse production, cotton and bio-fuels development in Barbados and Jamaica and innovative marketing of bananas in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. Investment among the micro and small-scale agri-food sector in all countries, especially in small-scale food, snack and juice processing; green house production; food retailing and initiation of organic production in most countries are also taking place.
Carrington said too that generally the investments were too few with limited impact on stemming the decline in regional agriculture. While most technical aspects in agriculture could be dealt with within the region, he said that financial resources remain a problem.
Suggesting that access to external markets is a major consideration for attracting investors, Carrington said that such access including legal, physical and institutional affairs are relevant in relation to the various trade and economic agreements the region has entered into such as the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. He also said that the Single Development Vision, adopted by the Heads identified agriculture as one of the main drivers of growth.
The support policy, institutions and mechanisms in the region for agriculture, he noted includes the Regional Transformation Programme for Agriculture (RTP); the research and development framework and the accompanying institutional arrangement, such as the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute; the Fisheries Development Programme and the accompanying institutional arrangement the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism and the strategy inherent in the Jagdeo Initiative to alleviate key binding constraints. The Investment Forum is one intervention seeking to enhance the implementation of the RTP as a regional strategy in agriculture.
