Georgetown : The United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) is providing financial support to Government’s agriculture diversification and export promotion drive. The organisation is providing Government with funding to the tune of £1.3M or US$2M to support the Guyana Agriculture Diversification Programme (GADP.)
It is expected that this investment will create over 1,000 new jobs, increase tilipia export from 1,000kg to 1,200kg a week and non-traditional agriculture exports, such as bell (sweet) pepper, hot pepper and butternut squash from 1,000kg to 1, 600kg weekly.
The DFID-funded project was launched at the Satyadeow Sawh Aquaculture Station at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, yesterday in the presence of Minister of Agriculture Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, British High Commissioner to Guyana Andrew Ayre, DFID Senior Economic Advisor and Growth Team Leader Matt Butler and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) CARANA Corporation Eduardo Tugendhat.
USAID has since terminated its support in this regard, nevertheless, Minister Ramsammy recognised the agency for starting the programme and for the lessons the country would have learnt from that venture. He commended DFID for taking up the project left-off by USAID.
He said the challenge now, like then, for all partners is to ensure that the resources expended on the project contribute to its sustainable development.
“This funding should be seed money where communities and people grow, and where we leave a legacy of adding to the production and supply chain,” he said.
Minister Ramsammy said therefore in continuing the programme, all partners now, must work to tackle the challenges that farmers and communities may face in sustaining it, one of which is market. “Find the market and people will find a way of producing, markets drive the production chain,” he said.
According to the Minister, Guyana is now over producing tilapia for the local market, and in fact has a production capacity in aquaculture culture that exceeds the local demand.
According to High Commissioner Ayre, the programme will help Guyanese exporters maximise their potential to supply markets elsewhere in the Caribbean, in North America and in Europe. He said that, at a time when global prices for food and agriculture commodities have been rising across the board, the region has experienced substantial declines in major agriculture exports resulting in the lack in performance of the sector despite growing world demand. This programme aims to tackle that in the areas covered, he said.
According to Butler, the support to Guyana forms part of DFID’s programme to the Caribbean (2011 to 2015) under which £75M will be spent to help the region tackle key areas of vulnerability.
The contribution provides support for three main areas; governance and security, disaster risk reduction and wealth creation. The Guyana project falls under the latter category.
Butler said that DFID will be using a very different approach on this project, whereby the project funding will be paid out based on actual results achieved; as a set of detailed indicators has been agreed upon with CARANA.
He said that this new ‘payment by result’ method being employed by DFID will guarantee value for money for both UK tax payers and will assure development impact of the project in Guyana.
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