Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha recently met with members of the Private Sector Commission’s (PSC) Agriculture Sub-Committee to discuss how the government and the local private sector can collaborate to develop public-private partnerships to advance Guyana’s agriculture sector.
During the discussion, Minister Mustapha said that over the last five years, the government has been working with the local private sector to develop several transformative projects.
“We have been putting in the infrastructure while the private sector has been making investments in the crops.
We worked with the consortium, Tacama Gold, to cultivate corn and soya for the livestock sector. We put in the infrastructure, the roads, the silos, the wharf, and so on, and they made the investment in the cultivation. This is how we have to do things. It shouldn’t be a government-only programme,” Minister Mustapha explained.
The Minister also said that over the next five years, the government will be investing in critical infrastructure to support the development and expansion of Guyana’s agriculture sector.
Minister Mustapha also disclosed that the government is moving ahead with the construction of storage facilities to support the local rice industry.
“In the rice industry, we see what is going on with the world market. So, we are looking to build storage facilities. The first will be built in Essequibo. The tender is out for the construction of a storage facility to store about two million bags of paddy. We are also looking at other areas to establish additional facilities,” he noted. (Ministry of Agriculture-Guyana)
