Dominica News Online- Thursday, March 11, 2021
A two-year project spearheaded by the Dominica Youth Business Trust (DYBT) with support from the Caribbean Development Bank (CBD) and the OECS Competitive Business Unit (CBU), is expected to improve the competitiveness of forty (40) of Dominica’s agro-processors in the global market.
The activities, which seek to tackle almost all the elements of the creation and preparation of a product for the market, will also develop the skills and afford greater rewards to the agro-processors for their products.
The project, which is titled, “Enhancing the Competitiveness and the Sustainability of Agro-processors in Dominica”, was launched last week.
Debra Blackman, Technical Specialist for Manufacturing at the OECS CBU, says that at the end of the training, it is anticipated that a cadre of Dominican agro-products will meet national and export market requirements.
“Entrepreneurs will be trained in Good Manufacturing Practices; that is to say, a system of ensuring that products are consistently produced and controlled according to quality standards, which includes record-keeping during manufacturing that demonstrates that all the steps required by the defined procedures and that instructions were, in fact, followed and that the quantity and quality of the food or drug [were] as expected,” she noted.
Other areas in which the agro-processors will be trained are costing and pricing of their products, packaging and labelling requirements for the product, product development, and training attachment.
“Once all of this training is completed, we want to ensure the efforts are sustained and that we will have new manufacturers emerging. The final action will be to conduct a feasibility assessment for a multi-purpose processing facility,” Blackman said.
Minister of Trade, Commerce, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Business, and Export Development, Ian Douglas, pledged his ministry’s support and encouraged entrepreneurs to find ways around the challenges facing the manufacturing industry.
“It is indeed a challenge, particularly when we grapple with the limited resources which call for making hard decisions and thinking outside the box; innovation. To increase the availability of local agro-process products, I, therefore, call on each one of you to rise to the challenge and make a difference in the agro-processing sub-sector,” he said.
Citing what he described as the “crippled” state of manufacturers worldwide and their inability to service their clients, Douglas said manufacturers have to adapt to new measures to facilitate safe production and resilient trade.
“Let me commend all of those of you who, amidst the challenges, have continued to produce value-added products for consumption and, more importantly, for exports,” the minister stated.
General Manager of Bannis Farm Products, Naomi Bannis Simpson, is one of the participants in this project which, she says, offers some optimism in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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