PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Sept. 8, CNS – The Trinidad and Tobago government Monday presented a TT$64.4 billion (One TT dollar =US$0.16 cents) budget to Parliament announcing a number of incentives for the agricultural sector
Finance Minister Larry Howai during a presentation lasting just over two hours, said that the budget was based on a price of a barrel of oil at US$80.
Howai admitted that the agricultural sector has long been in a state of decline; but said this decline
has now been reversed with government’s active engagement in the sector.
“At the centre of Government’s agricultural policy is the National Food Action Plan 2012-2015. The plan aims to raise productivity and production among our farmers,” he said.
“Indeed, we are now witnessing an expansion in agricultural production with the sector returning to
growth in both 2013 and 2014.
“Moreover, food price inflation has been averaging below 5.0 percent with the average for the first half of the calendar year 2014 being 3.5 percent – the first time in 21 years food price inflation has remained in single digits for six consecutive months,” he added.
Meanwhile, the minister said the commercial large farm programme has been extended to Guyana
in the context of the execution on September 6, 2013 of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the Government of the Cooperative
Republic of Guyana.
He said Expressions of Interest have been issued seeking qualified private agri-investors who will be provided with leases for land in Guyana to produce commodities of strategic importance to the food security of Trinidad and Tobago, and the responses are now being evaluated.
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