GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Ned­co) and the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) to in­crease the num­ber of agri-en­tre­pre­neurs and there­by in­crease lo­cal food pro­duc­tion.

Speak­ing at the sign­ing yes­ter­day Ned­co’s chair­man Clar­ry Benn said the MoU will sup­port par­tic­i­pants in train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices, men­tor­ship and net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

In ad­di­tion to tra­di­tion­al roles as debt fi­nanciers, Ned­co and the ADB’s col­lab­o­ra­tion un­der the busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme will al­so pro­vide fa­cil­i­ties for prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and re­search and pro­cess­ing along the agro-val­ue chain.

“We will pro­mote the growth and de­vel­op­ment of ADB’s clients for fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence, sta­bil­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness through fo­cused fi­nan­cial prod­ucts,” Benn added.

The ADB’s deputy chair­man Ran­dall Mo­hammed, who al­so spoke, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is con­tin­u­ous­ly seek­ing to de­vel­op its clients and in­crease in­ter­est in the sec­tor as it recog­nis­es the need to stim­u­late ac­tiv­i­ty along the en­tire agri­cul­tur­al val­ue chain.

These in­clude pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and pack­ag­ing, agro-pro­cess­ing, ex­port and fi­nal con­sump­tion.

“To ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare our clients for ef­fec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in these var­i­ous ar­eas of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty it is nec­es­sary to com­ple­ment their tech­ni­cal skill set with en­tre­pre­neur­ial knowl­edge.

“The bank has been able to at­tract an in­creased num­ber of youths over the last year with an in­crease of 32 per cent,” Mo­hammed said.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Avinash Singh al­so echoed the M0U as a proac­tive move as it will equip mu­tu­al clients with the knowl­edge to tran­si­tion in­to agri-en­tre­pre­neurs, who will con­tribute to a sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and fish­eries sec­tors.

He ex­plained such sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­clud­ed in­creased em­ploy­ment, re­duced de­mand for im­port­ed food lead­ing to less strain on the de­mand for for­eign ex­change while in­creas­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty not on­ly in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor but oth­er re­lat­ed ar­eas such as man­u­fac­tur­ing, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism, among oth­ers.

“The re­sult will be a pos­i­tive im­pact on the so­cial well-be­ing of cit­i­zens which is in di­rect align­ment with the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust in sup­port of the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy,” Singh added.