The Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try part­nered to launch the spe­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme for Car­i­fo­rum food pro­duc­ers on glob­al food safe­ty mod­erni­sa­tion. The launch took place Feb­ru­ary 13 at the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. More than 40 food and bev­er­age in­dus­try stake­hold­ers turned out to gath­er in­for­ma­tion on how to ac­cess funds for projects that will help them meet new safe­ty re­quire­ments.

Among those who ad­dressed food ex­porters were act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary San­dra In­dar; chair­man of the Food and Bev­er­age In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee Megh­nath Go­sein; Eu­ro­pean Union del­e­ga­tion pro­gramme of­fi­cer Kathrin Ren­ner; di­rec­tor of trade at the Trade Min­istry Nor­ris Her­bert, and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency board mem­ber Natasha Mustapha-Scott.

Pre­sen­ta­tions on the specifics of the spe­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme and Caribbean Ex­port's di­rect as­sis­tance grant scheme were giv­en by se­nior ad­vis­er of mar­ket in­tel­li­gence David Gomez, and se­nior ad­vis­er of the di­rect as­sis­tance scheme Kirk Brown. As one of the on­ly Caribbean agen­cies to have been award­ed Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund (EDF) fund­ing, Caribbean Ex­port has been man­dat­ed to set up re­gion­al im­ple­men­ta­tion and a reg­u­la­tion frame­work for the pro­gramme, said the Trade Min­istry in a state­ment. Gomez said the spe­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme fos­ters sup­port in the form of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, and fa­cil­i­tates sup­port from oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions. The state­ment said that Go­sein stressed the im­por­tance of the food and bev­er­age sec­tor per­form­ing at its full po­ten­tial.

He said that al­though fair­ly good tech­nol­o­gy was be­ing used in the in­dus­try, lo­cal food proces­sors were still too de­pen­dent on im­port­ed raw ma­te­r­i­al and im­port­ed pack­ag­ing. Go­sein and In­dar urged stake­hold­ers to take ad­van­tage of the sup­port be­ing of­fered by the spe­cial as­sis­tance pro­gramme, and em­pha­sised to man­u­fac­tur­ers the im­por­tance of keep­ing abreast of glob­al stan­dards to be­come com­pet­i­tive and sur­vive. The min­istry said that through the Trade Im­ple­men­ta­tion Unit, it will con­tin­ue to li­aise with re­source donors and key part­ners like Caribbean Ex­port, and iden­ti­fy tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance for the pri­vate sec­tor to as­sist ex­port-ready goods and ser­vices sup­pli­ers in T&T. This launch is the first of such ini­tia­tives iden­ti­fied by the unit.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the di­rect as­sis­tance grant scheme and its ad­van­tages to lo­cal and re­gion­al stake­hold­ers, vis­it the Caribbean Ex­port Web site at: www.carib-ex­port.com