IICA strengthens its technical cooperation in the Caribbean

Roseau, Dominica, October 13, 2011 (IICA). Within the framework of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture which is underway in Dominica, Victor M. Villalobos, Director General of IICA, presented the overall picture for the technical cooperation provided by the Institute in the region.

With its own resources, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is executing 44 projects in the Caribbean Region, most of them in the areas of agribusiness and marketing, innovation and technology, as well as agricultural health and food safety.

Villalobos informed the Group of Ministers of the Alliance for the Sustainable Development of Agriculture and the Rural Milieu in the Caribbean (the Alliance), that three other projects were underway with resources from the General Directorate’s Competitive Fund (FonDG), which will benefit 10 of the 14 Caribbean Member States of IICA.

Matthew Walter, Minister of Agriculture of Dominica and President of the Alliance, Irwin LaRoque, Secretary General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and other ministers of the Alliance were present at the event held in Roseau, capital of Dominica.

According to the Director General of IICA, the high food import bill currently paid by the Caribbean countries has made agriculture reposition itself as an irreplaceable and essential foundation for food security.

“At IICA we understood that we had to adapt to reality; the challenge has been to know how to better respond to the countries’ needs, despite the increasingly limited resources available,” declared Villalobos.

The Director General explained that the Caribbean Region will have priority in the selection of candidates for the postgraduate scholarship program in agriculture, signed last September by IICA and the National Council on Science and Technology (CONACYT) of Mexico, which has offered one hundred places annually in higher education centers in Mexico to young professionals.

The Caribbean countries will also benefit from the joint work program that will be established by IICA and four centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and which will focus on the areas of producer and market integration, roots and tubers, corn, and climate change.

The technical support provided by IICA in the Caribbean is funded mainly through three types of resources: those contributed by the countries as part of their annual quota (in total, this Region contributes US$4.6 million), those derived from the FonDG (the three Caribbean projects receive US$284,000 from the US$1.34 million in the Fund) and those obtained through external cooperation (which increased from US$12.5 million in 2009 to US$17.6 million in 2011).

There are forty-one IICA professionals in the Caribbean, led by a team comprising Victor del Angel, Director of Institutional Management and Regional Integration, Gregg Rawlins, Coordinator of Regional Integration and IICA Representative in Trinidad and Tobago, Ena Harvey, Coordinator of Management and Regional Integration for the Caribbean, and Dowlat Budhram, Secretary of Planning and Evaluation.

Other Caribbean nationals who occupy key positions within the Institute are Audia Barnett, IICA Representative in Canada, and Doreen Preston, Coordinator of the Language Unit.

For further information, please contact: 
victor.delangel@iica.int