Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, has sig­naled that the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor will be a key fo­cus of the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day evening at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port fol­low­ing the re­turn of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Rati­ram said his min­istry would be treat­ed as a pri­or­i­ty.

“Agri­cul­ture is go­ing to be very im­por­tant in the de­vel­op­ment of our econ­o­my. We’re look­ing at ex­pand­ing com­modi­ties, boost­ing ex­ports, and strength­en­ing agri-pro­cess­ing with the new fa­cil­i­ty gift­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia. There’s a lot that is go­ing to hap­pen for agri­cul­ture,” he said.

The min­is­ter not­ed that he had spent the day in Princes Town con­sult­ing with farm­ers about their con­cerns and work­ing on so­lu­tions.

On the is­sue of the re­for­esta­tion pro­gramme, Rati­ram said it had “lost its way” and would be re­viewed.

“Re­for­esta­tion is crit­i­cal be­cause we har­vest our con­ser­van­cies and tim­ber, so we need to be con­tin­u­ous­ly plant­i­ng trees. But over the years, work­ers as­signed to that pro­gramme were di­vert­ed to oth­er dutis across the coun­try.

“What we are look­ing at now is stream­lin­ing—en­sur­ing that those re­spon­si­ble for grass main­te­nance do just that, while those tasked with re­for­esta­tion fo­cus on tree-plant­i­ng and con­ser­va­tion,” he ex­plained.

Rati­ram added that he in­tends to max­imise the use of labour with­in agri­cul­ture to help dri­ve the sec­tor’s growth.

He al­so hint­ed at ma­jor de­vel­op­ments in fish­eries, re­veal­ing that out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion and po­ten­tial in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions have prompt­ed ur­gent re­forms.

“Our fish­eries man­age­ment bill is over 100 years old, and we were red-flagged by the Eu­ro­pean Union. NOAA in the Unit­ed States has al­so warned that with­out cor­rec­tive mea­sures, we risk be­ing sanc­tioned from Jan­u­ary 2026 in terms of ex­port­ing fish and fish­eries prod­ucts. There have been a lot of con­ver­sa­tions this week, and there is good news to come,” the min­is­ter said.

Mean­while, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee al­so promised “ex­cit­ing plans” for his min­istry in the new bud­get but de­clined to re­veal fur­ther de­tails.