In re­sponse to es­ca­lat­ing glob­al wheat prices, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI), has ex­tend­ed sup­port to lo­cal pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour to en­cour­age do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day said fund­ing un­der the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty will now be made avail­able for 75 per cent, up to a max­i­mum of $340,000 (ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$50,000), of the cost of new ma­chin­ery and equip­ment be­ing ac­quired to man­u­fac­ture al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing all av­enues are ex­plored in min­imis­ing the im­pact of ris­ing food prices, which is out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­trol and symp­to­matic of the on­go­ing glob­al food cri­sis among a myr­i­ad of oth­er fac­tors,” Gopee-Scoon said in a state­ment re­leased via her min­istry.

“Notwith­stand­ing the an­nounce­ment by main lo­cal wheat flour pro­duc­ers that the price in­crease on the do­mes­tic mar­ket is tem­po­rary, the sit­u­a­tion presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.”

The min­istry said it is an­tic­i­pat­ing that grant fund­ing will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for new pro­duc­ers of flour us­ing al­ter­na­tive sources, par­tic­u­lar­ly lo­cal­ly sourced root crops, as well as bring about an in­crease in the over­all pro­duc­tion of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.

These in­clude co­conut, sweet pota­to, dasheen, cas­sa­va, bread­fruit, plan­tain and pi­geon peas flour, and oth­er non-lo­cal­ly sourced op­tions such as oat flour and corn­meal/corn flour.

The ini­tia­tive com­ple­ments the cur­rent ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Mar­ket­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO), which con­tin­ues to en­cour­age the pub­lic to use root-crop flour as an al­ter­na­tive to wheat flour.

Al­though wheat flour al­ter­na­tives may not be cheap­er than wheat flour in the short-term, it is ex­pect­ed that the con­comi­tant in­crease in the sup­ply of root-crop al­ter­na­tives will re­sult in over­all low­er prices to con­sumers.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s Nu­tri­tion and Me­tab­o­lism Di­vi­sion, the many al­ter­na­tives are al­so as­so­ci­at­ed with greater lev­els of nu­tri­tion (iron, pro­tein, fats, vi­t­a­mins and fi­bre) and linked to low­er cho­les­terol, re­duc­ing the risk of hy­per­ten­sion, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, di­a­betes and oth­er non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

Large-scale pro­duc­tion of these al­ter­na­tive flours has the po­ten­tial to in­crease the na­tion’s food se­cu­ri­ty, pro­mote lo­cal out­put and con­tribute to a health­i­er na­tion, the min­istry said. The min­istry point­ed out that the op­por­tu­ni­ty is not on­ly avail­able to cur­rent food proces­sors but al­so farm­ers of the var­i­ous root crops, who, with the nec­es­sary ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, will now be in a po­si­tion to process and pro­duce al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour to sat­is­fy lo­cal and even re­gion­al de­mand.

The cur­rent Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (GFF) pro­vides lo­cal, small and medi­um-sized lo­cal firms with ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for new ma­chin­ery and equip­ment to im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, cre­ate more in­no­v­a­tive, high-val­ue prod­ucts, and in­crease ex­ports and pen­e­trate ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets.

This cov­ers a wide range of sec­tors, name­ly: Fi­nan­cial ser­vices, Mar­itime ser­vices, Avi­a­tion ser­vices, Fish­ing and fish pro­cess­ing, Soft­ware de­sign and ap­pli­ca­tions, Cre­ative In­dus­tries, Agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing and Man­u­fac­tur­ing. To date, more than $4 mil­lion has been award­ed to pro­duc­ers across these vary­ing sub-sec­tors.