Agriculture Minister eager to work with new World Bank Country Representative

Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister, Hon. Audley Shaw, says he is eager to work with the new World Bank Country Representative to Jamaica, Ozan Sevimli to advance the country’s agriculture sector.
Among the projects that will assist in this regard is the implementation of the second phase of the Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI II) and the Promoting Community-based Climate Resilience in the Fisheries Sector Project.
“I am looking forward to working with the World Bank…the World Bank (and others) all give us low cost loans for critical growth oriented projects. These projects are vital to growing the economy and that is why I am looking forward to working with the new representative,” he said.
The Minister was speaking at a meeting with Mr. Sevimli and other World Bank executives, at his St. Lucia offices in New Kingston on September 6.
REDI 2 is expected to strengthen linkages between Jamaica’s agriculture and tourism sectors by enhancing market access and climate resilience of micro, small and medium-sized agriculture and community tourism enterprises.
The objective of the Promoting Community-based Climate Resilience in the Fisheries Sector Project is to increase the adoption of climate resilient practices among targeted fishing and fish farming communities on the island.
Additionally, Mr. Shaw wants to work with the Bank for support in advancing other programmes such as the National Home-grown School Feeding Programme, the National Fruit Tree Planting Programme as well as a programme to provide irrigation to small farmers across the country.
Meanwhile, in his remarks, Mr. Sevimli said the World Bank will continue the successful path of the island economic reform agenda.
Among the areas of collaboration in furtherance of this are budget support operations, disaster risk management and economic and fiscal resilience.
“It also includes social protection and agriculture. Very soon we will go into the process of designing a new partnership framework, which will determine where the partnership (with Jamaica) goes from there,” he said.
The new World Bank country representative replaces Galina Sotirova who served for four years and departs the island on Sunday for Washington DC in the United States.
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