Minister of Agriculture of Haiti begins international search for support to rebuild agriculture
San Jose, Costa Rica, February 8, 2010, (IICA). On February 8, the Minister of Agriculture of Haiti, Joanas Gue, will begin an international search that will take him to Washington, Rome and Ottawa to meet with high-level governmental officials and representatives of international organizations in search of support for rebuilding the agricultural and rural sector of his country.
The announcement was made in Costa Rica, site of the Headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), which is providing technical and logistic support for the minister’s trip.
Together with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), IICA has provided the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development with technical support in preparing a special program intended to respond to the immediate aftermath of the January 12 earthquake, improve food production and integrate displaced populations into rural life.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has also provided support, preparing an initial project to aid one of the poorest regions of Haiti.
The trip
The Minister of Agriculture of the Dominican Republic, Salvador Jimenez, and the Director General of IICA, Victor M. Villalobos, will accompany Minister Gue in Washington and Rome. In Ottawa, he will be accompanied by high-level IICA officials.
The first leg of the trip will be in Santo Domingo, where Monday and Tuesday he will meet with Minister Jimenez and IICA officials to go over the projects and documents that will be presented in Washington, Rome and Ottawa.
Tuesday he will travel to Washington, where on Wednesday he will meet with the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States, Tom Vilsack, to discuss a number of requests for support and the possible support the U.S. government can provide.
He also has meetings scheduled with representatives of the World Bank (WB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The same day, he will part for Rome, where he will remain until February 17.
On Thursday, February 11, Gue, Jimenez and Villalobos will meet with representatives of various international organizations. On Friday, Gue will be the keynote speaker at a meeting at FAO, convened by the United Nations especially to analyze the case of Haiti.
On Monday, he will hold other meetings in Rome and on Tuesday will participate in a WB, IDB, IFAD meeting. On Wednesday, he will address the IFAD Board of Directors.
That same day he will travel to Ottawa, Canada. On Friday, he will hold several meetings with government officials and representatives of cooperation agencies in both Ottawa and Montreal. Canada is a long-standing strategic partner of the Ministry of Agriculture of Haiti and supports important cooperation projects being executed with technical support from IICA.
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