RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to­wards mak­ing the agri­cul­ture sec­tor tax free. 

De­liv­er­ing his 2020-2012 fis­cal pack­age,  Im­bert said the sec­tor re­ceived a 70 per cent in­crease in bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion from $759 mil­lion to $1.198 bil­lion.

Urg­ing pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships, Im­bert said $500 mil­lion will be spent to boost the sec­tor as a cat­a­lyst for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Say­ing the gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus was to in­crease the do­mes­tic food sup­ply, Im­bert said be­cause of glob­al food short­ages, T&T need­ed to pri­or­i­tize food se­cu­ri­ty.

“We can no longer tol­er­ate such a high food im­port bill,” he said, not­ing, “ de­clin­ing oil and gas rev­enues as well COVID- 19 have made food se­cu­ri­ty a na­tion­al ob­jec­tive.”

“We are com­mit­ted to in­su­lat­ing the coun­try from food short­ages and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions,” he added.

Im­bert said the plan was to  build a more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-ad­vanced agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem to in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of do­mes­tic food sup­ply.”

He re­vealed that a Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­ture and Bio-Tech­nol­o­gy will be es­tab­lished us­ing the ex­ist­ing hu­man re­sources and in­fra­struc­ture at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, CARIRI and oth­er agen­cies of the State.

“The fund­ing will sup­port the rapid ex­pan­sion in pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of se­lect­ed high-de­mand com­modi­ties with short pro­duc­tion cy­cles such as veg­eta­bles, legumes, roots and tu­bers, grains, fruits and small live­stock; ad­e­quate qual­i­ty seeds will be se­cured; the use of al­ter­na­tive feed­stock will be en­cour­aged and land is­sues will be ad­dressed to ac­cel­er­ate land tenure and ac­cess to idle state lands,” he re­vealed.

Say­ing there is a new vi­sion for agri­cul­ture, Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment want­ed in­vest­ments in pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture which al­lows farm­ers to max­i­mize yields by con­trol­ling every vari­able of crop farm­ing.

“It al­so in­cludes pro­mot­ing the use of home gar­dens; in­cor­po­rat­ing in­door ver­ti­cal farm­ing meth­ods to in­crease crop yields; cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed agri­cul­ture pro­grammes; in­creas­ing ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of lo­cal­ly pro­duced al­ter­na­tives to cater to healthy lifestyles, and de­vel­op­ing ma­rine aqua­cul­ture,” he said.

He not­ed that the gov­ern­ment will in­vest in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty-ori­ent­ed re­search and tech­nol­o­gy and strength­en the link­ages be­tween in­dus­try and agri­cul­ture to build sus­tain­able food sys­tems.

This will in­clude op­por­tu­ni­ties for agro-pro­cess­ing, nu­traceu­ti­cals, cos­met­ics, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, tex­tiles, pa­per, pack­ag­ing, ad­he­sive in­dus­tries among oth­ers.

Im­bert al­so re­vealed that the prod­ucts from farm­ing and fish­ing will be used to bol­ster the tourism in­dus­try, de­vel­op in­dus­tries which pro­duce bioethanol, biodiesel, and bio­gas from or­gan­ic waste and in­vest­ment in live­stock farm­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Stake­hold­ers scep­ti­cal

But sev­er­al stake­hold­ers said the $1.198 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tions was sim­ply not enough.

Agri­cul­ture econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said, “Giv­en the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances fac­ing the coun­try at this time. our pol­i­cy­mak­ers must do more to­wards pre­serv­ing food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty at the house­hold lev­el, pro­tect and strength­en the men and women who work to feed the na­tion and, to act ag­gres­sive­ly to sta­bi­lize sen­ti­ment and build con­sen­sus on the way for­ward.”

He said the more di­a­logue was need­ed.

“Leav­ing the pro­duc­tion of food sole­ly to be de­ter­mined by mar­ket forces and farm­ers’ pri­vate in­vest­ment hori­zon is un­ten­able. More dan­ger­ous is un­der­es­ti­mat­ing or mis­cal­cu­lat­ing the dan­gers and risks as­so­ci­at­ed with surges and col­lapse of sup­ply,” Ma­haraj said.

He said the Min­is­ter “failed to ad­dress the im­por­tance of an over­ar­ch­ing pol­i­cy frame­work for agri­cul­ture and rur­al de­vel­op­ment.”

“He missed yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­rect­ly ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion about our love for con­sump­tion over­pro­duc­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan al­so said the al­lo­ca­tion was in­suf­fi­cient.

He point­ed out that the sec­tor got $1.5 bil­lion in 2015 and this did noth­ing to boost agri­cul­ture.

“We have a lot of out­stand­ing in­cen­tives to pay. We have ve­hi­cles that have to sat­is­fy the ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion unit, and pre­di­al lar­ce­ny so how could we say $500 mil­lion go­ing to boost agri­cul­ture,” Khan said.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said while the al­lo­ca­tion to the sec­tor was im­pres­sive, more fund­ing was need­ed to stim­u­late the sec­tor in the short­est time pos­si­ble. 

“Agro-pro­cess­ing must be giv­en the high­est pri­or­i­ty giv­en the fact that we have such a huge food im­port bill,” he added.

Be­fore the bud­get, stake­hold­ers have called for greater in­vest­ment to mod­ernise the sec­tor and en­hance its prof­itabil­i­ty. Agri­cul­ture con­tributes less than one per cent to GDP and re­ceived $759 mil­lion in last year’s bud­get.