A food pro­duc­tion ini­tia­tive be­tween Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go will al­low both coun­tries to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce their food im­port bills.

This, ac­cord­ing to lead­ers of both coun­tries - Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali.

The two were speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s yes­ter­day, af­ter Ali par­tic­i­pat­ed in a wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Memo­r­i­al Park, Port-of-Spain.

As they an­nounced the joint ini­tia­tive, both were asked just how much this pro­gramme would as­sist in re­duc­ing food im­ports for their re­spec­tive coun­tries.

“You will be shocked to see the lev­el of work and plan­ning that has al­ready tak­en place,” Ali said.

PM Row­ley chimed in, “One word can cov­er that…we can sig­nif­i­cant­ly pos­i­tive­ly im­pact not just sup­ply chain but our af­ford­abil­i­ty and our cost.”

Ali said the ef­forts made to achieve this goal will be re­vealed in a re­port pre­sent­ed at the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum, which be­gins to­day (Fri­day) at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Ali said both coun­tries would not be shy­ing away from the com­mit­ment, which was al­so made by oth­er CARI­COM coun­tries, to re­duce their food im­port bills by 25 per cent by 2025.

“Make no mis­take, we don’t have the lux­u­ry of time to ad­vance this is­sue of food se­cu­ri­ty. Food se­cu­ri­ty is not on­ly im­por­tant from a price per­spec­tive, as Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley right­ly said, you can have the mon­ey but you don’t have the food,” Ali said.

He said there were emp­ty su­per­mar­ket shelves in many de­vel­oped coun­tries caused by two ma­jor fac­tors - the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

Row­ley said with these two ma­jor fac­tors af­fect­ing food avail­abil­i­ty and food se­cu­ri­ty around the globe, the two gov­ern­ments recog­nised the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion their coun­tries could be in if, as pre­dict­ed, these sup­ply chain is­sues keep re­cur­ring.

“Dis­rupt­ing the cur­rent com­fort zones of the mod­els of re­ly­ing on im­port­ed foods and em­pha­sis­ing to a pop­u­la­tion that our meals must now be based on eat­ing what we can pro­duce and grow­ing what we eat, that is the mod­el that we have to fol­low,” the PM said.

Row­ley pro­vid­ed de­tails of the ar­eas be­ing tar­get­ed in this pro­gramme, which in­clude agri­cul­ture, rice, hu­man re­sources, agro-pro­cess­ing, live­stock, shade hous­es and co­conut project, a tech­ni­cal task force, corn and soya.

Row­ley said a com­mit­ment was made by his Cab­i­net in Ju­ly to en­sure that these ar­eas of con­cern are ad­dressed in the Guyana/T&T col­lab­o­ra­tion.

He said the pri­vate sec­tor was al­so be­ing en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in this ini­tia­tive.

The work of the task force will make it eas­i­er for pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors to be­come in­volved in this pro­gramme, Ali said.

“Part of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to work on the re­moval of all non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers. We al­ready have a com­plete list of all the non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and you will see the po­ten­tial that ex­ists,” Ali said.

Row­ley said im­ports from CARI­COM coun­tries were of­ten blocked, some­times by the whim and fan­cy of cus­toms of­fi­cers or for fear of dis­ease or con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from the ex­port­ing coun­try.

Ali said the task force was cre­at­ing a stan­dard­ised list that will al­low for goods to be im­port­ed and ex­port­ed with much greater ease.

“We are now say­ing loud­ly that we recog­nise there are sys­temic prob­lems and we have to solve those sys­temic prob­lems and we are com­mit­ting our­selves to the res­o­lu­tion of those sys­temic prob­lems through this task force,” Ali said.

He said the col­lab­o­ra­tion was not on­ly about food pro­duc­tion and get­ting more peo­ple in­volved in agri­cul­ture.

“It is en­sur­ing we de­vel­op and have the right pol­i­cy frame­work in place to sup­port the in­vest­ment we’re go­ing to make to sup­port lo­cal farm­ers, to sup­port the re­gion­al trade sys­tem, to sup­port the lo­gis­tics, lo­gis­tics hub and lo­gis­tics frame­work that must be de­vel­oped to ad­vance our plans and food se­cu­ri­ty,” Ali said.

Both coun­tries have al­so been dis­cussing tourism and, in part­ner­ship with Suri­name, en­er­gy.

Ali said the re­spec­tive Tourism Min­is­ters will be meet­ing be­fore his del­e­ga­tion re­turns to Guyana, as Row­ley re­vealed some de­tails about the en­er­gy dis­cus­sions.

“We took a de­ci­sion this morn­ing that our tech­ni­cal peo­ple in en­er­gy both from Guyana, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Suri­name, in­ci­den­tal­ly, would meet or con­tin­ue to meet but meet specif­i­cal­ly, and by this, by the end of Sep­tem­ber, will pro­duce for us a doc­u­ment with rec­om­men­da­tions to be con­sid­ered by these three gov­ern­ments in the con­text of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed States on this whole is­sue of re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty,” Row­ley said.