SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Yes­ter­day’s sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) agree­ment be­tween T&T and Guyana can lead to a win-win sce­nario for Cari­com and its 15-mem­ber states in im­prov­ing its food se­cu­ri­ty and sup­ply for the re­gion.

The sign­ing came four days af­ter Guyana’s George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try called on its gov­ern­ment to block T&T from putting its sig­na­ture on the MoU un­til T&T re­moves non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers against Guyana.

How­ev­er, the call by the cham­ber was ig­nored as T&T’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and Guyana’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Hugh Todd signed the MoU, promis­ing to de­vel­op a strong strate­gic part­ner­ship in the ar­eas of trade, in­vest­ment, agri­cul­ture, food se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy, se­cu­ri­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, tourism, non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and goods and ser­vices for the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of their coun­tries and the Caribbean.

The sign­ing was wit­nessed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali who then held a joint press con­fer­ence in George­town to dis­cuss their plans for the agree­ment on a unit­ed front.

The press con­fer­ence fol­lowed five days of an Agri-In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po in George­town which Row­ley at­tend­ed with Min­is­ters Browne, Kaz­im Ho­sein and Avinash Singh.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters, Ali said to over­see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the MoU, a high-lev­el bi­lat­er­al com­mis­sion will be es­tab­lished com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors who will be giv­en three months to de­liv­er its work.

Hav­ing had bi­lat­er­al and per­son­al dis­cus­sions with Row­ley, Ali said “the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less.”

T&T, he said, will now take on an “ag­gres­sive im­ple­men­ta­tion” and an “im­me­di­ate fol­low up in Au­gust” on de­ci­sions and poli­cies that are re­quired in push­ing the MoU for­ward.

“But more im­por­tant­ly, de­vel­op a mod­el and frame­work through an en­tire agri-food busi­ness sys­tem that will evolve in­to main­stream eco­nom­ic and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clu­sive of pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

“We want the in­vestors in both coun­tries to be ful­ly on board.”

Ali said his talks with Row­ley were “fo­cused, very pos­i­tive and for­ward-look­ing. I would say this, it was very frank, open and it gave us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly ex­am­ine a sec­tor but it gave us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the bull by its horns I would say…and to iden­ti­fy, in a very open and frank way, missed op­por­tu­ni­ties and to help us iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fu­ture. We are not naïve…we are not un­aware of im­ped­i­ments, or blocks, or con­straints or chal­lenges.”

He said both coun­tries have agreed to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with a fo­cus on se­cur­ing a fu­ture for their cit­i­zens through har­nessed op­por­tu­ni­ties and to help de­vel­op com­pa­nies.

“At the end of the day, we are part of a fam­i­ly. In any fam­i­ly when there are chal­lenges there is a greater de­sire to over­come…and the needs of the fam­i­ly are what is para­mount.”

“If you ap­proach life to cre­ate win-win sce­nar­ios in which the true na­ture of hu­mankind should present it­self, that is, you want the best for your neigh­bours as you want for your­self, then, you would have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach not on­ly to the way you ap­proach life but the way you ap­proach work and the way you ap­proach mak­ing de­ci­sions.”

Ali made it clear the on­ly way both coun­tries can strike an ac­cord was through a pow­er­ful part­ner­ship, stat­ing they have shared “a long and glo­ri­ous his­to­ry work­ing to­geth­er.”

The two coun­tries are al­so ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing a car­go fer­ry fa­cil­i­ty to trans­port peo­ple and pro­vide goods and ser­vices be­tween Guyana and T&T.

“We can­not ad­dress any is­sue un­less we cre­ate the plat­form…the ve­hi­cle to al­low us to do that…and this MoU does that. The for­mat which we are do­ing this with Guyana and T&T is at the po­lit­i­cal lev­el. We have de­cid­ed that we will dri­ve the agen­da…the pol­i­cy di­rec­tion and once the com­mit­ment is there, the op­por­tu­ni­ties can be mind-blow­ing.”

He said it is not on­ly about in­vest­ment but sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­gion.

Ali said they have drawn up a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment for the re­gion itemis­ing is­sues, prod­ucts and the ac­tion re­quired by mem­ber states.

Com­ing out of this doc­u­ment, it will be placed un­der the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my com­mit­tee chaired by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley which will be ad­dressed in Ju­ly in Suri­name.

Row­ley agreed with Ali’s sen­ti­ments, stat­ing that “once we com­mit our­selves to im­prove our cir­cum­stances noth­ing will pre­vent us from suc­ceed­ing.”

On the oth­er hand, Row­ley said, “if we are timid, ma­li­cious, de­fen­sive and un­car­ing, time will pass us by.”

“What we have demon­strat­ed here this week, in Guyana, is that Cari­com can seek... and bi­lat­er­al el­e­ments of Cari­com can find, for the wider re­gion... and for our var­i­ous coun­tries, so­lu­tions to our many prob­lems. Be­cause we do have prob­lems. It is be­cause we have prob­lems why we are con­cerned with what is hap­pen­ing with us.”

With the ad­vent of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that “we found our­selves be­ing de­nied ac­cess to our nor­mal food sup­plies which comes to us from Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Rus­sia and the US.

He said they have looked at what Cari­com can and must do “with­in Cari­com to dis­en­tan­gle them­selves from the ten­u­ous world food sup­ply that will get more trou­ble­some and put our shoul­ders to the wheel with­in Cari­com to our own pro­duc­tion sys­tems chang­ing our sup­ply and busi­ness mod­els…to put our­selves in food sup­ply sit­u­a­tions that will not be im­ped­ed, de­stroyed or ob­struct­ed by oth­er peo­ple else­where in the world.”

He said even when the Gov­ern­ment had mon­ey in hand, they could not buy food.

“And that sit­u­a­tion is not go­ing to change. The sit­u­a­tion will get worse.”

In ad­di­tion, Row­ley said, every day the price of goods keeps ris­ing.

“We can’t tell the im­porters what price to put on their food be­cause we know price con­trol on food does not work.”

Those im­porters, he said, can’t even place an or­der in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.

“What does Cari­com do?… look at our own pro­duc­tion sys­tems.”

Row­ley said the pri­vate sec­tor needs to re­fo­cus its in­vest­ment in food sup­ply from pro­duc­tion to dis­tri­b­u­tion while young peo­ple will have to be trained to put the agri­cul­ture sec­tor on a good foot­ing.

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