Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed the new board of di­rec­tors of the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank. The new board is head­ed by Rudy Ma­haraj as chair­man and mem­bers in­clude Win­ston Rud­der, Nir­van Ma­haraj, Dr Bibi Ali, Bis­nath Ram­rat­tan, Nor­ris De­onar­ine and Liesel-Maria Williams. These ap­point­ments have been ap­proved by Cab­i­net to serve for a two-year term with ef­fect from No­vem­ber 16, 2010.

Bharath, in pre­sent­ing the board mem­bers with their in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment, said: "I am sat­is­fied with the new ap­point­ments and look for­ward to re­vamp­ing the ADB to bet­ter serve the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty as we strive to build a food se­cure na­tion."

He ex­pressed his con­fi­dence that the new board mem­bers would of­fer a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence and di­verse skills which were con­comi­tant with the ADB's mis­sion "to fa­cil­i­tate sus­tain­able so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the agri-busi­ness and rur­al sec­tors through strate­gic part­ner­ships with our stake­hold­ers, de­liv­er­ing cut­ting-edge fi­nan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices to sat­is­fy our in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal cus­tomers util­is­ing a team and cus­tomer-fo­cused ap­proach."

Ma­haraj has served Cen­tral Trinidad through vol­un­tary ser­vice, con­tribut­ing ex­ten­sive­ly as a di­rec­tor on the board of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce.