Agriculture meet set for March next year
BY MATTHEW VARI
Despite the good ground made during the inaugural Agriculture Summit in 2017, this year’s summit has been moved to March 2019.
This was confirmed by the Minister for Agriculture Benny Allan, who cited the busy hosting of APEC as one of the reasons behind the deferral of event.
“We just discussed that we will have our 2019 agriculture summit to bring small farmers and cooperatives in March next year,’’ he said.
“We couldn’t do it this year because of the APEC, so we will hold the next summit in March next year.”
Mr Allan previously indicated, when asked in July by this paper, that it would take place in October in the industrial city of Lae.
This, however, did not eventuate and even Prime Minister Peter O’Neill in October emphasised, during the signing of the Sepik Chicken Grain and Cocoa Innovation Project in the Sepik Plains Special Economic Zone, the need to revisit the progress and outcomes aimed for during the inaugural summit.
When asked about the delay in July, Allan indicated the move to host the summit in October was due to the recommendations of the inaugural summit held in 2017 were not acted on by the department.
“We have decided hold it in Lae in October, the reason for deferring is because of some of the recommendations out from the summit last year have to be implemented by the line agencies,’’ Mr Allan said.
“Because of the funding issue now we could not implement some of those so we decided to give more time and we deferred that summit to October this year.”
In 2017 the inaugural summit was held in November in Port Moresby, which attracted a huge turnout from both government agencies and the private sector with many key issues being discussed.
Despite the success of the first summit, some within the private sector have raised concerns on the slow pace to implement the recommendations from it, considering the 2018 financial year’s focus by Government in the Agriculture sector.
March will indeed be watched closely by those in the sector, especially small farmers and cooperatives, who have been indicated to get special focus, considering their absence during the first meeting.
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