Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Zul­fikar Mustapha is card­ed to meet with sev­er­al T&T com­pa­nies dur­ing their del­e­ga­tion’s vis­it to T&T.

The Guyanese gov­ern­ment has al­ready signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with one lo­cal com­pa­ny.

Yes­ter­day, the Guyana In­vest­ment Of­fice signed an MOU with No­vo Farms at the Point Lisas Busi­ness Park. Speak­ing af­ter the event, Mustapha said he will be meet­ing with oth­er T&T busi­ness­es.

“To­mor­row (Fri­day,) I will be meet­ing with a num­ber of oth­er com­pa­nies. Last week, we had a com­pa­ny from To­ba­go that makes green­hous­es in To­ba­go - they will set up a com­pa­ny in Guyana, hy­dro­pon­ics,” he said.

“We’ll be work­ing with a num­ber of com­pa­nies to en­sure we de­vel­op the agro-pro­cess­ing and de­vel­op the agri­cul­ture sec­tor.”

Mustapha ex­plained that the move is all part of the CARI­COM agen­da to re­duce the re­gion’s food im­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

“What we are try­ing to do in the Caribbean, as chair­man of the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al task force in CARI­COM, we are look­ing to al­so move away from the pri­ma­ry prod­uct that farm­ers pro­duce and make it more val­ue-added,” he said.

“Most times, our prod­uct is be­ing ex­port­ed to North Amer­i­ca and oth­er parts of the world, pri­ma­ry prod­uct. And they de­vel­op it and they add val­ue to it and it comes back to us to be im­port­ed. So, we want to move away from that.”

Mustapha, along with Guyana Pres­i­dent, Dr Ir­faan Ali, will vis­it the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po, which be­gins to­day. It’s the sec­ond one for the re­gion. The first was held in May in Guyana.

“I am hop­ing that oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, oth­er CARI­COM coun­tries can fol­low suit. So, af­ter Trinidad, we can have the con­tin­u­a­tion move on and we can have this as a reg­u­lar cy­cle so that we can woo in­vestors to come in­to the Caribbean to in­vest and pro­duce those foods that we want to pro­duce and re­duce the food im­port bill,” Mustapha said.

Glen Ramd­hani, chair­man of No­vo In­ter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed, said the com­pa­ny hopes, with­in the next six months, to be­gin es­tab­lish­ing an agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana sim­i­lar to the one in T&T to dri­ve in­no­va­tion in farm­ing, pro­duc­tion and pack­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“It’s part of our growth strat­e­gy for the re­gion and...our vi­sion for CARI­COM where we see Trinidad and To­ba­go as the pro­cess­ing cen­tre, Guyana as the food bas­ket and pro­duc­tion cen­tre with pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties as well,” he said.

Al­so at­tend­ing the MOU sign­ing were Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Guyana. Pres­i­dent Ali. They not on­ly toured No­vo’s pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty but al­so oth­er com­pa­nies in the busi­ness park.