Invest SVG teams up with Ministry of Agriculture

Executive Director of Invest SVG Bernadette Ambrose-Black says that in recent times, agriculture has been identified as one of, if not the most productive sector in St Vincent and the Grenadines.{{more}}

“Invest SVG believes in giving equal attention to all the local economic focus sectors and as a result, Invest SVG has teamed up with the Ministry of Agriculture to help change the status quo about Agriculture being a dirty job. We are trying to link Agriculture with entrepreneurship and help people realize it can be a viable business,” says Ambrose-Black.

Speaking during an interview last week at her office upstairs the Bank of St Vincent and the Grenadines Building on Granby Street, Ambrose-Black said that Invest SVG and the Ministry of Agriculture are currently making strides to improve the agricultural sector in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

“We don’t want anybody to think that agriculture is not our focus…we don’t want anybody to think that agriculture is not important to Invest SVG and that we are marginalizing agriculture,” said Ambrose-Black, who added that her organization is currently focusing on the establishment of a central packaging and managing facility that speaks to the establishment of a local thriving agri-business sector.

She said that the agricultural sector is an untapped lucrative source of investment and that they are hoping to have a central packaging and processing facility that will revitalize the local agri-business sector.

The idea, according to Ambrose-Black, is to have the facility realized in a public private partnership, where the government owns the facility, but it is privately managed.

She says that they are looking into having the facility funded by tapping into finances available through multilateral initiatives with Turkey, Mexico and other donor agents.

Apart from this facility, Invest SVG and the Ministry of Agriculture will also be working closely together to raise the quality of the agricultural produce.

“What we see at times is that one day the produce is good and another day the quality has fallen and this can be due to simple things like transportation; so clustering will assist with quality,” said Ambrose-Black, adding that opportunity exists for this country to make millions of dollars in agricultural exports, but we are not competitive because of various reasons.

She said that we can target premium market niches, such as organic and fair trade with main stream/traditional commodities like banana and citrus, while we can also target high end niches with highly differentiated, branded value added products from non-traditional products such as root crops (dasheen, sweet potatoes, yams, arrowroot), herbs (hot peppers, ginger, sorrel) and fruits (mangoes, soursop, guava).

She added that a significant amount of this produce goes to waste because of the unavailability of processing and storage facilities.

Also says Ambrose-Black, “in the past the older persons were the ones involved in agriculture, so now we are trying to get the youths involved in agriculture, but we do not want a duplication of efforts, so we are working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture.”

Business facilitations manager at Invest SVG Nadine Agard-Juillerat supports the thrust in agriculture, stressing that Invest SVG is attempting to re-establish this country as the food basket of region.

She stressed that they have already explored places where the packaging and processing facility can be set up, while they are also exploring ways of stopping the brain drain as it relates to persons who can contribute to improving the agricultural status in SVG.

“The funding is there (for the facility), but we must have negotiations at the government level.

“We want to see diversity in crops production and included in this we want to stop the brain drain. There are persons that go away, leave because they cannot get jobs here relating to agri-science and technology, so we want to change that, get persons to stay here,” said Agard-Juillerat.

She added that an upsurge in agriculture speaks to guaranteed food security and better Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, because of increased exports, as at this time our import/export ratio is 80/20 percent.

It was also noted that substantial investment opportunities exist in areas such as aquaculture, mariculture, cut flowers for export, hydroponics (e.g. lettuce), arrowroot baked goods and desiccated fruits and vegetables (for example products such as tropical trail mix with pineapple, peanuts, coconut).

Invest SVG has seven economic focus sectors, Information Communication Technology (ICT), tourism, agriculture, financial services, manufacturing, renewable energy and the creative arts.