Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Ra­jiv Diptee is warn­ing of dire con­se­quences like hunger and mal­nu­tri­tion if T&T and the rest of the re­gion do not achieve food se­cu­ri­ty in the short term.

“Ac­cord­ing to CEO of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) Dr Patrick An­toine, 52 per cent of the peo­ple in the Cari­com pop­u­la­tion are food in­se­cure,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

“If that or­gan­i­sa­tion is say­ing that, then this is alarm­ing. Peo­ple don’t un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween food se­cu­ri­ty, nu­tri­tion, food in­se­cu­ri­ty and vul­ner­a­ble house­holds.

“They don’t un­der­stand these con­cepts. We want peo­ple to see what lifestyle shifts are need­ed. Even with­out the mon­e­tary ac­cess, what lifestyle shifts could lend to the re­duc­tion of the food im­port bill.”

He gave de­tails of the “A Taste of the Caribbean” Caribbean Food and Bev­er­age Event which was held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya from June 28 to Ju­ly 1.

He said Cari­com has is­sued a man­date that the re­gion is mov­ing to 25 per cent re­duc­tion in the food im­port bill by the year 2025.

“How do we get there? We get there with projects like this event that we are hold­ing, which has room for dis­cus­sions and we need to be in­ter­ac­tive. When you speak about food se­cu­ri­ty we speak of both do­mes­tic and re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. I think the coun­tries of the re­gion need to lean on each oth­er to achieve this ob­jec­tive.”

Diptee said the event held last week was con­ceived as a project of the SATT, the Caribbean Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion and their of­fi­cial part­ners for the event, the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He said the idea was to cre­ate a fo­rum where is­sues like food se­cu­ri­ty could be dis­cussed.

“Food se­cu­ri­ty has been high on the agen­da for the last two to three years and it’s been some­thing that we’ve been con­cerned about es­pe­cial­ly look­ing at the COVID pan­dem­ic, the Russ­ian and Ukraine War and we con­tin­ue to be an im­port-re­liant na­tion with no con­trol of prices. The event was con­ceived as an op­por­tu­ni­ty where it has the po­ten­tial to be an an­nu­al event for the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. That’s the scope of the am­bi­tion.”

He said the is­sue of food se­cu­ri­ty was a com­plex one and all stake­hold­ers must be in­clud­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion.

“There are sev­er­al dy­nam­ics to that con­ver­sa­tion—you have to have con­ver­sa­tion with con­sumers to make them aware of the op­tions. How do you do that? You do that by cre­at­ing a show­case to show them what they can do. That’s the in­spi­ra­tion for the ‘Live Kitchen’ at this event. You want to cook and show peo­ple what can be en­joyed and the dif­fer­ent cuisines on of­fer not on­ly in T&T but the Caribbean.

Apart from the kitchen where cook­ing was done, the event al­so had dif­fer­ent con­fer­ences which cov­ered rel­e­vant is­sues that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the na­tion as a whole face when it comes to food prices, food se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er re­lat­ed top­ics.

“It is about how we cre­ate the dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions about the dif­fer­ent as­pects of how you get to food se­cu­ri­ty. Food se­cu­ri­ty has many lay­ers such as en­er­gy, food nu­tri­tion, it has the sus­tain­able com­po­nent like cli­mate change and tech­nol­o­gy.

“We put to­geth­er a sched­ule of 10 to 12 con­fer­ences that start­ed on Wednes­day. We had one on crime and the cost of food as peo­ple need to un­der­stand how crime im­pacts the cost of food as the cost of se­cu­ri­ty is very high. There was al­so an en­er­gy-re­lat­ed dis­cus­sion.

“We al­so had a dis­cus­sion on the dig­i­tal econ­o­my as that’s go­ing to im­pact the sec­tor as it’s how we do busi­ness.”

For­eign ex­change

Diptee said one way the Gov­ern­ment can as­sist the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in their goal of help­ing T&T be­come food se­cure is en­sur­ing it re­ceives for­eign ex­change to do in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness.

“This con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem. For­eign ex­change is what we in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty use to en­sure that we are able to buy goods in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I must say that we are re­silient as a sec­tor. De­spite all the doom and gloom dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, we nev­er had a re­al food short­age.

“How­ev­er, the truth is the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion is not im­prov­ing. So long as we con­tin­ue in this par­a­digm of fight­ing for for­eign ex­change at some point it will get more dif­fi­cult. Re­mem­ber, su­per­mar­kets don’t buy or sell in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, that’s the job of the im­porters. Do you know that some dis­trib­u­tors had to fold up their op­er­a­tions be­cause of a lack of for­eign ex­change?”

He added that the en­tire food im­port bill re­lies on for­eign ex­change ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

“At the re­gion­al lev­el, the food im­port bill is US$6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, while in T&T it’s around US $1 bil­lion. So, if an event like the one we are now hold­ing could help in a $100 mil­lion re­duc­tion be­cause of the con­ver­sa­tions and ideas put for­ward, then we can move for­ward.”