Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

The Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to slash T&T’s hefty US$2.5 bil­lion food im­port bill by ramp­ing up agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports, with a tar­get of earn­ing TT$1 bil­lion through the sale of agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties to for­eign mar­kets.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, as he out­lined plans to re­vive Ca­roni Green Lim­it­ed (CGL)—a for­mer state en­ter­prise that once gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant for­eign ex­change through the ex­por­ta­tion of hot pep­pers.

Ac­cord­ing to Rati­ram, a re­vi­talised CGL has the po­ten­tial to earn up to $400 mil­lion through ex­ports. He crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion for shut­ting down CGL, along with the Seafood In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SIDC), both of which, he said, were suc­cess­ful­ly gen­er­at­ing for­eign in­come at the time.

Rati­ram al­so high­light­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in lo­cal rice pro­duc­tion, stat­ing that out­put had plum­met­ed from 3,000 tonnes an­nu­al­ly to just over 445 tonnes. He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing with con­sul­tants and the min­istry’s ex­ec­u­tive team re­gard­ing CGL’s re­struc­tur­ing and re­ac­ti­va­tion.

Con­tact­ed on the move, for­mer CGL CEO Shar­ma Lal­la said the com­pa­ny op­er­at­ed from 2013 to 2017, dur­ing which time it ex­port­ed over one mil­lion pounds of hot pep­pers and earned ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7 mil­lion. He em­pha­sised that the en­ter­prise was fo­cused on ex­ports and did not com­pete with­in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Lal­la added that the com­pa­ny’s 2016 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials showed a healthy $5.6 mil­lion in the bank and no re­liance on Trea­sury fund­ing.

Mean­while, for­mer Cou­va South MP and a sit­ting mem­ber of the UNC gov­ern­ment dur­ing CGL’s op­er­a­tional years, Rudranath In­dars­ingh voiced sup­port for the project’s re­turn.

“Re­viv­ing CGL would make ef­fec­tive use of aban­doned Ca­roni lands and con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” In­dars­ingh said.

He al­so crit­i­cised the PNM for what he de­scribed as a lack of ini­tia­tive in re­vi­tal­is­ing agri­cul­tur­al lands and sup­port­ing ex-Ca­roni work­ers.

“Be­tween 2015 and 2025, the on­ly lands dis­trib­uted were from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ef­forts. The PNM nei­ther de­vel­oped new plots nor un­der­took sig­nif­i­cant land dis­tri­b­u­tion,” he said.

De­vant Ma­haraj, who served as Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion (2010–2015), al­so sup­port­ed the move. He not­ed that restart­ing CGL could yield nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits for the na­tion­al dri­ve to­ward eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.