Gov­ern­ment has re­ceived a dis­burse­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$80.4m (�9.8m) in the form of grant fund­ing through the Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment As­sis­tance Pro­gramme. The fund­ing, pro­vid­ed through Sec­tor Bud­get Sup­port, will be de­posit­ed in­to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund un­der the Cen­tral Bank and is part of the Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Mea­sures for Sug­ar Pro­to­col Coun­tries with its use de­fined by the Cab­i­net-ap­proved and Eu­ro­pean Union-ac­cept­ed Na­tion­al Adap­ta­tion Strat­e­gy for the Sug­ar In­dus­try.

A to­tal of �75 mil­lion have been pledged by the EU for the con­tin­ued re­struc­tur­ing of the for­mer­ly state-owned sug­ar sec­tor and to sup­port the gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to in­crease do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion. Gov­ern­ment de­ter­mines how these funds are to be utilised in the con­text of na­tion­al ob­jec­tives to min­imise the so­cio-eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and pro­mote di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my.

The dis­burse­ment is the fi­nal tranche of the Mul­ti­an­nu­al In­dica­tive Pro­gramme 2007 to 2010 which was ap­proved by the EU af­ter the sug­ar pro­gramme out­lined in the Na­tion­al Adap­ta­tion Strat­e­gy achieved key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors mu­tu­al­ly agreed up­on by the EU and the Gov­ern­ment. In a state­ment, Gov­ern­ment said there has been sig­nif­i­cant progress in the re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme from the be­gin­ning of the Mul­ti­an­nu­al In­dica­tive Pro­gramme 2007-2010 to present. Ma­jor achieve­ments in­clude:

�2 TT$82M in pay­ments to more than 3,000 cane farm­ers as tran­si­tion­al sup­port.

�2 The is­suance of agri­cul­tur­al leas­es to for­mer Ca­roni em­ploy­ees

�2 Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of the sta­tus of farm­ers squat­ting on Ca­roni lands

�2 Com­pen­sa­tion to 9000 for­mer em­ploy­ees of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd

�2 Pur­chase of pen­sion an­nu­ities for for­mer Ca­roni em­ploy­ees

�2 Con­struc­tion of ac­cess roads for 17 agri­cul­tur­al es­tates and 28 sub­di­vi­sions

�2 Re­vi­sion of the agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tive pro­gramme

�2 Ex­e­cu­tion of train­ing pro­grammes for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 farm­ers

�2 Es­tab­lish­ment of four mega farms on lands for­mer­ly owned by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd.

�2 Draft­ing of an En­vi­ron­men­tal Sta­bil­i­ty Plan to ad­dress the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns re­lat­ed to the agri­cul­tur­al, res­i­den­tial and in­dus­tri­al ar­eas for­mer­ly un­der the Ca­roni (1975) ltd.

"The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to ful­fill the pre-de­ter­mined per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors," said Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj who ex­plained that the dis­burse­ment was a di­rect re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment sat­is­fy­ing all per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors of the 2010 fi­nanc­ing agree­ment.He added: "This sig­ni­fies the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing greater eco­nom­ic ties with in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts as well as sus­tain­ing the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment."

Charg� d'Af­faires of the Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union, Daniela Tra­macere, said: "The sup­port the Trinidad and To­ba­go's Na­tion­al Ac­tion Plan for Food Pro­duc­tion was in the frame­work of the EU's sup­port to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of this coun­try and cre­at­ing a more com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my. "We are very pleased to­day to present this ad­di­tion­al fund­ing to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as it un­der­scores a con­tin­ued strong and suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship be­tween the EU and this coun­try."