KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – The Opposition New Democratic Party says it will in the coming weeks presents its idea for agriculture in this country.
The party this week completed a series of visits to farmers across the country
“… we are going to spend some time, particularly myself and the shadow minister of agriculture, Mr. [Roland ‘Patel’] Matthews … putting a package together and presenting it to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as to what we think is needed to be done in relation to the agricultural sector,” Opposition Leader Arnhim Eustace said at an NDP press conference Wednesday.
“I want to point out that tourism earnings is over [EC$]300 million while agriculture is under [EC$]20 million. It used to be the other way around,” the former prime minister and minister of finance noted.
“… we should have had the agriculture growing the same time as the tourism. That is how our economy would have been stronger. But this decline, much of it we know, is the poor performance of the Ministry of Agriculture in relation to how they handled diseases, especially black sigatoka. But we will make some recommendations very shortly in that regard,” Eustace said.
The recommendation, which could come in two weeks, are the NDP’s views on “the minimum requirements in order to bring some improvement in the agricultural sector,” Eustace said.