Mixed views on budget from agriculture sector

While agricultural consultant Riyadh Mohammed says he was pleased with the budget allocation for the agriculture sector, he is calling on the Government to place more emphasis on collaborations with the private sector and educational bodies.

"There needs to be a stronger collaboration between the public, private and the educational bodies,” Mohammed told Newsday in a telephone interview on Monday.

“This should be the focus — to pay attention to more safe and nutritious food production rather than the abundance.

"We (TT) have to focus on quality because we have to mesh food production with nutrition security."

Mohammed made the comments shortly after Finance Minister Colm Imbert presented the 2022 budget in the Red House.

Imbert announced that the agriculture sector has been allocated $1.249 billion. The minister said he also intends to allocate $300 million, in the first instance, to the agriculture stimulus package fund.

Last year, the Agriculture, Land and Fisheries ministry received $1.198 billion and benefitted from a $500 million stimulus package, representing a 70 per cent increase over 2019’s allocation.

Also sharing his views on the 2021/2022 budget was president of the Trinidad Unified Farmers Association, Shiraz Khan.

On last year’s stimulus package, Khan said: "Up to now, we (farmers) do not know where that $500 million went. We did not see any developmental work in the sector to suggest that the money was used to benefit us."

Saying he had internet woes on Monday, Khan said he listened to the presentation while tending to his animals. He said he did not see the original budget documents.

"I am not too excited. Listening to the budget, certain announcements Imbert made were about things we (farmers) would have spoken about," Khan said.

"We had requested to have support for farmers and farmers’ organisations to have access to foreign exchange from EximBank. The minister promised to look into this, but we did not hear anything about this in the budget. We are having problems like everybody else to access foreign exchange."

He promised to comment additionally on the budget after reviewing it properly.

Calls to Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Minister Clarence Rambharat went answered.