Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A num­ber of par­ties have ex­pressed in­ter­est in be­ing part of a trans­port so­lu­tion for the Cari­com re­gion. The ini­tia­tive is mov­ing to a stronger po­si­tion of so­lu­tion, and the cur­rent Cari­com sum­mit will al­low lead­ers to see how fast they can move on this idea.

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali said so dur­ing an in­ter­view with T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

Ali is among Cari­com lead­ers in T&T for the 45th Cari­com meet­ing which cel­e­brates Cari­com’s 50th an­niver­sary. Ali chairs Cari­com’s food se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee.

When Guyana host­ed its Agri-In­vest­ment Fo­rum in 2022, the is­sue of trans­porta­tion–par­tic­u­lar­ly mar­itime trans­port–was raised by T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who of­fered as­sis­tance to pro­pel the re­gion’s food se­cu­ri­ty dri­ve and had called on in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pants at the Ex­po to as­sist Cari­com to fund and op­er­ate a re­gion­al fer­ry. That has not ma­te­ri­alised.

Ali spoke to the T&T Guardian at the Break­fast Shed in Port-of-Spain where he had lunch. Dressed ca­su­al­ly in shorts and a po­lo jer­sey, Ali’s en­tourage parked near the Break­fast Shed and he walked in. He ex­am­ined sev­er­al food stalls be­fore choos­ing roti, sub­se­quent­ly en­joy­ing some at a ta­ble fac­ing the Gulf of Paria. Ali was al­so greet­ed by a young Break­fast Shed work­er who said she was from Guyana.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about food se­cu­ri­ty progress, Ali said that tremen­dous in­ter­est from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors has been built fol­low­ing Agro ex­pos in Guyana and T&T. “We’ve seen a lot of pri­vate sec­tor re­la­tion­ships be­ing built and a lot of co-in­vest­ment pro­pos­als com­ing for­ward,” he added.

“From the side of the two Gov­ern­ments, the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of food pro­duc­tion in agri­cul­ture has def­i­nite­ly ig­nit­ed new in­ter­est and en­er­gy in agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­tion.”

Asked about pro­posed in­tra-re­gion­al fer­ry trans­port, he con­firmed that trans­porta­tion re­mains one of the most crit­i­cal is­sues, which is why it con­tin­ues to be on Cari­com’s sum­mit agen­da.

Ali said, “But we have been mak­ing some progress. At least now there are a num­ber of par­ties that have ex­pressed in­ter­est in be­ing part of the so­lu­tion. So I think now we’re mov­ing now from the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion stage to a stronger po­si­tion of find­ing a so­lu­tion.”

On the time­line for com­ple­tion, Ali added, “Well, we’d like it to hap­pen yes­ter­day, that’s why it’s on the (sum­mit) agen­da.

“I think that the up­date we get at this Cari­com meet­ing will al­low us to see how fast we can move and I think what we need to do now is to con­cre­tise who the dif­fer­ent part­ners are, where we have in­ter­est, and then pur­sue those part­ners.”

On Cari­com, Ali said there are close con­nec­tions and the re­la­tion­ship with T&T goes be­yond the econ­o­my, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial, gov­ern­ment, or pri­vate sec­tor.

“It’s a tremen­dous peo­ple-to-peo­ple re­la­tion­ship through crick­et al­so (al­though it’s not a proud thing to speak about now for us when we speak about crick­et), but al­so through en­ter­tain­ment and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties–our re­la­tion­ship has been ex­pand­ing. It’s very, very strong.”

Ali said he saw all re­gion­al states play­ing a role to ad­vance the ideals of Cari­com, “And that is en­sur­ing we build a sys­tem in Cari­com that brings pros­per­i­ty to all the re­gion’s peo­ples.”