The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday unveiled a privatisation, outsourcing and public-private partnership (PPP) strategy that is designed to reverse agricultural sector contraction and empower Bahamians.

Michael Pintard, minister for agriculture and marine resources, addressing the House of Assembly during the mid-year budget debate, said his ministry was working with the private sector in several key areas to improve the struggling industry's efficiency.

This includes "the privatisation of the feed-mill", with Mr Pintard lamenting previous failures to provide livestock farmers with the “efficiency and effectiveness” required to grow the industry.

He added that his ministry has endorsed several PPPs, while the Minnis Cabinet has recently agreed that “all packing houses throughout the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the produce exchange on Potter’s Cay (dock) will now be available for producer organisations, preferably farmer producer organisations, to acquire the individual packing houses or all of the packing houses in order to use them as distribution centres".

Mr Pintard added that the goal was for private sector purchasers to turn these packing houses into "centres where they may process vegetables and fruits for a number of the value-added products that we are presently importing".

He added that delivering on the packing house privatisations fulfills a promise made by the current FNM administration to improve food security, with the private sector now sharing the load and producing greater efficiency.

The Bahamas' main distribution centre is in Andros at the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI), which is currently managed by the government. Private distribution centres, though, can decentralise the supply network by offering options to farmers and creating greater efficiency in the systems for quality control.

However, the downside is that private distribution centres still have to be subsidised by the state, and often raise the overall cost of food when the network becomes too burdensome.

Mr Pintard said: “Remember, if we're going to have a thriving agriculture sector it is absolutely important to have a robust distribution centre, and that whole distribution ecosystem can in fact be augmented by the acquisition of these packing houses throughout The Bahamas, and the produce exchange located at Potter’s Cay (dock).”

"If we had to have a vibrant livestock sector, there is a need for us to have a slaughterhouse, a national slaughterhouse system and, again, the Cabinet has paved the way for that to happen.” He said the Bahamas Agriculture, Health and Food Safety Authority (BAHFSA) will be overseeing the slaughterhouse system.

Mr Pintard added that another "key policy decision has been the requirement that all Heads of Agreement written in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas mandate that hotels, restaurants, food stores and others that are sourcing food for sale to tourists in the Bahamas and Bahamians; 40 percent of that must be sourced from Bahamian producers.”

He said that for the Government to show its sincerity on this initiative, large ministries must spend at least 75 cents of every $1 allocated to food with Bahamian producers.