BUSINESS MONDAY: Region needs to pay more attention to agriculture sector

ALTHOUGH agriculture continues to occupy low attention in some countries including Barbados, the sector has come in for high marks by some of the participants to the recent Central Bank of Barbados annual review conference.

The participants were asked to vote on which economic sectors ought to be given the greatest support in the drive to revive Caribbean economies undermined by COVID-19.

It was announced during one of the discussions by Moderator Sonia Gill that private sector development was identified as the lead sector followed by agriculture, education, disaster risk reduction preparation, tourism, and health.

Just recently, this paper reported that agriculture continues to take a beating across several Caribbean economies, except perhaps for the bigger states like Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago which have flourishing agriculture industries.

The preference of voters seemed to suggest that the region needs to boost their agricultural sectors that have the possibility of adding to food security.

It was revealed that the food import bill for the region as a whole has surpassed Bds$10 billion. “CARICOM is a net food importer with a food import bill of US$5 billion,” according to a policy brief published by the Shridath Ramphal Centre at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

Tourism, which receives the lion share of budget support, has performed badly and last year in Barbados, it decline 96 per cent, a factor that contributed to the 18 per cent decline in GDP.

So far this year, activity in the tourism industry remained subdued.