Professor Augusto Medina (foreground), president of the Sociedade Portugese de Inovaco (SPI), makes a presentation to parties attending the signing of a contract for a US$3.7 million market-strengthening project for Caribbean agribusinesses at the offices of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Hope Gardens, St. Andrew, yesterday. Looking on is Mark Spinoglio, a consultant with SPI. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

The Caribbean Agribusi-ness Association (CABA) has launched a US$3.7 million (J$244.2 million) project to improve the competitiveness of small and medium-size enterprises in the agri-food industry within the Caribbean Community.

The contract to officially commission the project was signed yesterday at the offices of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) at Hope Gardens, St. Andrew.

According to Harry Seeram, president of the CABA, the aim is to heighten the awareness and knowledge of stakeholders on food safety and international trade standards, market-access techniques and competitiveness capabilities.

"Agriculture is something that people don't want to really get involved in ... so we are actually going to be training, educating and informing them on how they can be able to access these markets," Mr. Seeram explained. "It is no sense producing if you don't have markets and we must be able to identify these markets so that people will want to produce," he noted.

Very significant

The CABA president emphasised that the project "was very significant for the region at this time (because) there is so much happening with tourism and World Cup cricket." He said, "if we could organise industry associations and groups together and show them how they could build entrepreneurship and get involved in agribusiness, then I think the whole region is going to move forward."