Gov­ern­ment has ex­tend­ed sup­port to lo­cal pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour to en­cour­age do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, by mak­ing avail­able grant fund­ing through the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI).

The min­istry says in a state­ment that “the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty will now be made avail­able for 75%, up to max­i­mum of TT$340,000 (ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$50,000) of the cost of new ma­chin­ery and equip­ment be­ing ac­quired to man­u­fac­ture al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.”

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Sen­a­tor Paula Gopee-Scoon, notes the in­creased ac­cess to grant fund­ing is in re­sponse to es­ca­lat­ing glob­al wheat prices.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing all av­enues are ex­plored in min­i­miz­ing the im­pact of ris­ing food prices, which is out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­trol and symp­to­matic of the on­go­ing glob­al food cri­sis among a myr­i­ad of oth­er fac­tors,” the trade min­is­ter says.

“Notwith­stand­ing the an­nounce­ment by main lo­cal wheat flour pro­duc­ers that the price in­crease on the do­mes­tic mar­ket is tem­po­rary, the sit­u­a­tion presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.”

MTI says it an­tic­i­pates grant fund­ing will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for new pro­duc­ers of flour us­ing al­ter­na­tive sources, par­tic­u­lar­ly lo­cal­ly sourced root-crops, as well as bring about an in­crease in the over­all pro­duc­tion of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour, such as co­conut, sweet pota­to, dasheen, cas­sa­va, bread­fruit, plan­tain and pi­geon peas flour, and oth­er non-lo­cal­ly sourced op­tions such as, oat flour and corn­meal/corn flour.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the ini­tia­tive com­ple­ments the cur­rent ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Mar­ket­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO), which con­tin­ues to en­cour­age the pub­lic to use root-crop flour as an al­ter­na­tive to wheat flour.

“Mon­i­tor­ing records in­di­cate con­sis­tent quar­ter­ly pro­duc­tions of 1.15 mil­lion kgs of sweet pota­to and 1.07 mil­lion kgs of cas­sa­va which can read­i­ly be con­vert­ed in­to root-crop flour,” NAMDE­V­CO re­port­ed back in June this year.

“This da­ta shows that farm­ers con­tin­ue to suc­cess­ful­ly pro­duce a wide range of root crops de­spite ex­ter­nal fac­tors that can af­fect pro­duc­tion, in­clu­sive of cli­mate change," the state com­pa­ny added.

Ben­e­fits to con­sumers

“Al­though wheat flour al­ter­na­tives may not be cheap­er than wheat flour in the short-term, it is ex­pect­ed that the con­comi­tant in­crease in the sup­ply of root-crop al­ter­na­tives will re­sult in over­all low­er prices to con­sumers,” the trade min­istry points out.

MTI says it is work­ing in tan­dem with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health on ini­tia­tives which can con­tribute to a health­i­er na­tion.  It notes that in ad­di­tion to con­tribut­ing to food se­cu­ri­ty, ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tives to wheat/white flour pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote and im­prove the nu­tri­tion­al sta­tus of the pop­u­la­tion.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, Nu­tri­tion & Me­tab­o­lism Di­vi­sion, the many al­ter­na­tives are as­so­ci­at­ed with greater lev­els of nu­tri­tion (iron, pro­tein, fats, vi­t­a­mins and fi­bre), and linked to low­er cho­les­terol, re­duc­ing the risk of hy­per­ten­sion, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, di­a­betes and oth­er non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases,” the trade min­istry ex­plains.

It added: “Large scale pro­duc­tion of these al­ter­na­tive flours has the po­ten­tial to in­crease the na­tion’s food se­cu­ri­ty, pro­mote lo­cal out­put, and con­tribute to a health­i­er na­tion. The op­por­tu­ni­ty is not on­ly avail­able to cur­rent food proces­sors, but al­so farm­ers of the var­i­ous root-crops, who, with the nec­es­sary ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, will now be in a po­si­tion to process and pro­duce al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour to sat­is­fy lo­cal and even re­gion­al de­mand.”

Cur­rent­ly, the Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty (GFF) pro­vides lo­cal, small and medi­um-sized lo­cal firms with ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for new ma­chin­ery and equip­ment to im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, cre­ate more in­no­v­a­tive, high-val­ue prod­ucts, and in­crease ex­ports and pen­e­trate ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets.

This cov­ers a wide range of sec­tors name­ly: Fi­nan­cial ser­vices, Mar­itime ser­vices, Avi­a­tion ser­vices, Fish­ing and Fish Pro­cess­ing, Soft­ware De­sign and Ap­pli­ca­tions, Cre­ative In­dus­tries, Agri­cul­ture and Agro-Pro­cess­ing, and Man­u­fac­tur­ing.

To date, more than TT$4 mil­lion has been award­ed to pro­duc­ers across these vary­ing sub-sec­tors.

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For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the ex­tend­ed Grant Fund Fa­cil­i­ty and qual­i­fy­ing cri­te­ria for lo­cal pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour, vis­it: Min­istry’s web­site www.tradeind.gov.tt