CARICOM team holds discussion with President-as plans for agriculture, food security forum forge ahead
With the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) moving ahead with its plans to address food security in the Region as a result of rising food prices and other issues affecting CARICOM states, a regional team led by CARICOM’s Secretary-General Edwin Carrington yesterday met with President Bharrat Jagdeo to finalise schedules for various fora on the critical issues.Following up on a meeting held in December, 2007 when CARICOM Heads met to discuss the problem of rising food prices and its effects on the region, the Secretary General pointed out that since President Jagdeo is the Head of Government responsible for agriculture and thus, the initiative in the region, today’s discussion was mainly to outline specific dates for a number of meetings which will be convenient to the Guyanese Leader. These will lead up to the major agriculture investment forum involving CARICOM Heads in June. By mid-month, it is expected that the Heads will host a press conference on the issue while a forum to be held in Guyana is being planned for next week. “One of the ways in dealing with the issue of food prices is enhancing the supply, increasing the supply. In fact, there are two aspects, not only food prices, but even food availability. We have to produce it, and Guyana is not only fortunate to have the President leading but you (Guyanese) have a country with one of the inputs necessary for food production – land - something which is not much in abundance in a number of the CARICOM countries”, the Secretary-General posited.He noted that Suriname and Belize also have an advantage in this area. “These are countries in CARICOM that have a large capacity in terms of land and I expect that a significant amount of any increase of the Region’s agriculture will take place right here in Guyana,” he said. As food prices continue to soar in CARICOM and other countries as a result of the rising cost of fuel due to increased demand and a switch in crops among other occurrences, Governments have been putting interim measures in place to cushion the effects. Guyana recently announced a zero-percent excise tax on diesel, in response to the March increase in fuel prices. Oil is now priced at US$110 per barrel. Government also, earlier this year, zero-rated additional food items which once attracted Value Added Tax (VAT). Meanwhile, a number of commodities on the international market have been continuing to increase including milk, cheese and wheat-flour. Last week, The Ministry of Agriculture, in its efforts to promote food security in Guyana, launched a ‘grow more’ campaign to encourage citizens to produce more food locally.
