The T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS) is sup­port­ing the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in its thrust to in­crease and im­prove agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion in­clud­ing lo­cal crop, aqua­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture.

In a state­ment the TTBS ex­plained that this is be­ing done through the de­vel­op­ment of a draft ac­tion plan which will as­sist stake­hold­ers in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to im­prove the qual­i­ty of goods and ser­vices used in the sec­tor and al­low for the more ef­fi­cient use of re­sources.

The plan was re­cent­ly de­vel­oped dur­ing a work­shop ti­tled, “Pro­mot­ing Di­a­logue be­tween the Na­tion­al Qual­i­ty In­fra­struc­ture (QI) and the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” and is based on the in­put of qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture pa­ra­me­ters (stan­dards, con­for­mi­ty as­sess­ment – in­spec­tion, test­ing, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, me­te­o­rol­o­gy, ac­cred­i­ta­tion, mar­ket sur­veil­lance and aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion) in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

It will be de­vel­oped for pro­posed im­ple­men­ta­tion with­in the next 12 to 18 months .

Ac­cord­ing to the TTBS the work­shop served as a means to in­crease aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of the pri­vate sec­tor to the im­por­tance of qual­i­ty and stan­dards in mak­ing their busi­ness­es more com­pet­i­tive,

in­crease par­tic­i­pants’ un­der­stand­ing of the role of QI in en­hanc­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and pro­vide guid­ance to T&T’s QI to struc­ture its ser­vices to match the needs for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, some of which in­clude pro­mot­ing and in­creas­ing the use of good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.

Rod­ney Ram­nath, Man­ag­er Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Di­vi­sion said qual­i­ty In­fra­struc­ture is a key com­po­nent of in­ter­na­tion­al trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, adding that a well-co­or­di­nat­ed QI is es­sen­tial for the do­mes­tic mar­kets and for prod­ucts to gain ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets.

He added that for de­vel­op­ing and tran­si­tion­ing economies, rais­ing aware­ness of a coun­try’s na­tion­al qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture and the ap­pli­ca­tion of stan­dards can lead to a host of ben­e­fits s like cre­at­ing bet­ter, safer, and more sus­tain­able prod­ucts, in­creas­ing do­mes­tic com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and en­hanc­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tion.

CARI­COM Re­gion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Stan­dards and Qual­i­ty (CROSQ) CEO Derek Omar al­so not­ed that the draft plan would as­sist in the in­clu­sion and ex­pan­sion of qual­i­ty sys­tems and pro­ce­dures in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in T&T.

The draft plan will be fur­ther re­fined over the next month with the con­tin­ued en­gage­ment of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor stake­hold­ers pri­or to be­ing sub­mit­ted for ap­proval, with im­ple­men­ta­tion slat­ed to be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2022.