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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Minister eyes $1B in agricultural exports

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36 days ago
20250602
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries Michelle  Anne Thomas, right, speaks with Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Public Utilities Shivanna Sam and Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Ravi Ratiram during a visit to a pumping station at Plum Mitan last Wednesday.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries Michelle Anne Thomas, right, speaks with Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Public Utilities Shivanna Sam and Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Ravi Ratiram during a visit to a pumping station at Plum Mitan last Wednesday.

Roberto Codallo

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to slash T&T’s hefty US$2.5 bil­lion food im­port bill by ramp­ing up agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports, with a tar­get of earn­ing TT$1 bil­lion through the sale of agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties to for­eign mar­kets.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, as he out­lined plans to re­vive Ca­roni Green Lim­it­ed (CGL)—a for­mer state en­ter­prise that once gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant for­eign ex­change through the ex­por­ta­tion of hot pep­pers.

Ac­cord­ing to Rati­ram, a re­vi­talised CGL has the po­ten­tial to earn up to $400 mil­lion through ex­ports. He crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion for shut­ting down CGL, along with the Seafood In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SIDC), both of which, he said, were suc­cess­ful­ly gen­er­at­ing for­eign in­come at the time.

Rati­ram al­so high­light­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in lo­cal rice pro­duc­tion, stat­ing that out­put had plum­met­ed from 3,000 tonnes an­nu­al­ly to just over 445 tonnes. He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing with con­sul­tants and the min­istry’s ex­ec­u­tive team re­gard­ing CGL’s re­struc­tur­ing and re­ac­ti­va­tion.

Con­tact­ed on the move, for­mer CGL CEO Shar­ma Lal­la said the com­pa­ny op­er­at­ed from 2013 to 2017, dur­ing which time it ex­port­ed over one mil­lion pounds of hot pep­pers and earned ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7 mil­lion. He em­pha­sised that the en­ter­prise was fo­cused on ex­ports and did not com­pete with­in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Lal­la added that the com­pa­ny’s 2016 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials showed a healthy $5.6 mil­lion in the bank and no re­liance on Trea­sury fund­ing.

Mean­while, for­mer Cou­va South MP and a sit­ting mem­ber of the UNC gov­ern­ment dur­ing CGL’s op­er­a­tional years, Rudranath In­dars­ingh voiced sup­port for the project’s re­turn.

“Re­viv­ing CGL would make ef­fec­tive use of aban­doned Ca­roni lands and con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” In­dars­ingh said.

He al­so crit­i­cised the PNM for what he de­scribed as a lack of ini­tia­tive in re­vi­tal­is­ing agri­cul­tur­al lands and sup­port­ing ex-Ca­roni work­ers.

“Be­tween 2015 and 2025, the on­ly lands dis­trib­uted were from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ef­forts. The PNM nei­ther de­vel­oped new plots nor un­der­took sig­nif­i­cant land dis­tri­b­u­tion,” he said.

De­vant Ma­haraj, who served as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion (2010–2015), al­so sup­port­ed the move. He not­ed that restart­ing CGL could yield nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits for the na­tion­al dri­ve to­ward eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.


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