Mexican Ambassador, Agri Minister explore areas of collaboration

AMBASSADOR of the United Mexican States, José Omar Hurtado Conteras, has discussed areas of collaboration in the agriculture sector, when he met Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, at his Regent Street office on Wednesday. According to a release, during their discourse, the two officials discussed areas in which Mexico and Guyana can propel the sector while Minister Mustapha indicated that Government is willing to facilitate lands for persons interested in investing in corn and soya bean. “Over the years, we’ve been importing things like corn and soya from other countries at a cost of almost US$25M annually for the poultry industry.

In this year’s budget we’ve put systems in place to offer incentives to encourage investments for the production of corn and soya. We can facilitate the acquisition of lands for these projects. There is a lot of land available in the Intermediate Savannahs. If you can make representation for investments in those areas, we would be very interested. Of course, with investments there would be job creation and this Government is committed to creating jobs for our people,” Minister Mustapha said.

In addition to corn and soya bean, Minister Mustapha also spoke about facilitating knowledge transfer through training to improve Guyana’s agricultural practices. He added that, in addition to investments, it was important to develop Guyana’s human capital if Government is to achieve real economic development. Ambassador Conteras said that his office was willing to work with Government, functioning as a facilitating party between the Ministry and Mexican investors for the agriculture and other productive sectors. He also spoke about opportunities for collaboration in an effort to boost Guyana’s coconut industry.

“We have a very special programme now for coconuts but this programme has stopped for the while because of the pandemic. It’s not possible to execute it virtually because it involves technical training in Mexico. Once things begin to normalize, we can explore having some of your technical people participating in this programme,” Ambassador Conteras said. The two also discussed areas for collaboration to improve Guyana’s rice, other crops and sugar industries, climate smart agriculture through the use of shade houses and boosting the livestock to increase meat production.