The Gov­ern­ment has ac­cept­ed a do­na­tion of 25 met­ric tonnes, or more than 55,000 pounds, of pre­mi­um-qual­i­ty bas­mati rice along with a con­tain­er of ed­i­ble oils from In­dia. This ges­ture comes as in­vestors from the In­di­an state of Haryana ex­pressed in­ter­est in es­tab­lish­ing a rice mill in Trinidad.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing held at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, White­hall, yes­ter­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said fol­low­ing his vis­it to In­dia in May, ex­ec­u­tives from the Haryana State Co­op­er­a­tive Sup­ply and Mar­ket­ing Fed­er­a­tion Lim­it­ed (HAFED) paid a vis­it to Trinidad. This re­sult­ed in the com­pa­ny now ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing es­tab­lish­ing a rice mill.

HAFED has al­so ex­tend­ed in­vi­ta­tions to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries as well as the Na­tion­al Flour Mill (NFM) to vis­it Haryana to tour its fa­cil­i­ties next month. He said to­geth­er, the State and HAFED can do some­thing that could ben­e­fit the farm­ers in T&T as well as im­prove the sup­ply of rice.

Dr Row­ley al­so re­vealed the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­tries will over­see the col­lec­tion of the do­na­tion. It will then be turned over to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to be dis­trib­uted to those in need.

Dr Row­ley said, “HAFED is the largest APEX co­op­er­a­tive fed­er­a­tion in Haryana state in In­dia, which is a ma­jor food-pro­duc­ing state in In­dia. It process­es 2.2 mil­lion met­ric tonnes of com­modi­ties an­nu­al­ly and has an an­nu­al turnover of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.6B, so it’s quite a sub­stan­tial en­ti­ty. Dur­ing their vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go, the co­op­er­a­tive held sev­er­al meet­ings with pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties lo­cal­ly and is ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a rice mill in Trinidad.

“HAFED has ad­vised that it will do­nate 25 met­ric tonnes of rice. Cab­i­net to­day (Thurs­day) ac­cept­ed this of­fer, and the Min­istry of Trade will take steps to en­sure that we re­ceive it in the prop­er way with all the doc­u­men­ta­tion. When it gets to Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices will come up with a pro­gramme for dis­trib­ut­ing this for the needy peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.