Outgoing Agriculture Minister Noel Holder on Saturday told attendees at the commissioning ceremony for the new Parika Agro Processing entity that the opening of the state-run facility will better position the country’s agro-processing sector to raise its game by consolidating its impact on the international market.
The Minister’s remarks would likely have resonated with sections of a local agro-processing community comprising mostly micro and small enterprises, little by way of result having, so far, come from earlier engagements between the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) and a high-powered ministerial delegation that covered the Finance and Business portfolios, among others, in an effort to secure an enhanced level of government support for a mostly resource-strapped sector.
The investment value of the new processing facility is in excess of $50 million excluding operating equipment provided for the facility by the Ministry of Business. In the immediate term the Parika processing and packaging plant will create employment for twenty persons.
The commissioning of the East Bank, Essequibo facility, the operations of which will be overseen by the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) coincided with the disclosure by Holder that the state-run corporation will itself be venturing onto the export market, particularly and packaging of the new brand will be done at the newly commissioned Parika facility.
The facility, according to Holder, will immediately create a weekly demand for 6,000 pounds of plantains, which demand will benefit approximately 100 farmers from the region. “Plantains have always been an export potential crop. It is one of our priority crops for development. NAREI has been advancing programmes for farmers to adopt innovative technology and management best practices to achieve high levels of production and sustainability,” Holder said.
The new GMC plantain chip project was launched against the backdrop of a 2018 investigation into the importation of banana and plantain chips which indicated that during that year $53.5 million had been spent on these imports. According to Holder these import levels pointed to the fact that there are potentially lucrative market opportunities that are yet to be optimized. He said that while the country has already made some measure of progress in expanding its range of agro-produce, there was need for further acceleration of this pursuit.
In outlining what he said are the strides which the local agro-processing sector has made, Holder listed post-harvest handling, enhanced agricultural practices, the development of local agri-businesses, expanding agro- processing operations and forging contractual arrangements between buyers and sellers as areas in which the sector has made a mark. “These are all areas in which we have made strides over the past five years,” Holder declared. He noted that the Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been working to tap into the diaspora market to expand the reach of the country’s agro-industries. Simultaneously, Holder named the GMC as “the prime mover in the identification of markets for non-traditional crops.”
Meanwhile, Holder said that beyond the new Parika facility, further plans are in place to create multiple flavours of plantain chips as well as to develop a model which will allow for the utilisation of the facility by agro-processors who may require the use of such a facility.
