The scholarship and professional development program would make it possible to meet the training needs expressed by the country’s agricultural authorities, stated the Director General of IICA.
San Jose, Costa Rica, December 11, 2014 (IICA). Promoting staff training among agriculture specialists and adopting proven successfully developed innovations in other nations of the hemisphere are the principal actions that the Ministry of Agriculture of Suriname is seeking to promote in order to improve agricultural productivity in the country.
This was expressed by the Minister of Agriculture of Suriname, Soeresh Algoe, who visited the headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), in Costa Rica, to discuss the areas for joint work in the coming years.
Minister Algoe and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of Suriname, Gerrit Breinburg, met with the Director General of IICA, Víctor M. Villalobos, and agreed to undertake, in their country, joint activities to develop technological and institutional innovations that will promote food production of good quality and high nutritional value.
In Costa Rica, Algoe and his delegation participated in two field trips in order to acquaint themselves with efficient production systems and replicate good practices in Suriname.
“We have seen that waste and residues from production are used to prepare other products, so that all the raw material is used up. They turn the waste into resource and this generates more income and diversifies production; these types of initiatives are what we should promote in Suriname”, said Algoe.
Villalobos emphasized the good results that have been obtained with the Mexico–Caribbean Countries Training Program , and made IICA’s Scholarship and Professional Development Program available to Caribbean nationals for the purpose of supporting capacity building in the agricultural sector.
“Many of the topics that we have discussed are along the lines of the areas for cooperation established in our 2014-2018 Medium-term Plan. If we adjust the topics for training to the needs expressed by the Minister and we make full use of the fellowship program, we can support Suriname in strengthening its agriculture”, stated Villalobos.
Also participating in the meeting were the Deputy Director General of IICA, Lloyd Day; the Director of Management and Regional Integration, Diego Montenegro; and the Representative of IICA in Suriname, Abimbola Abiola.
For more information, contact:
diego.montenegro@iica.int
