Gov’t eyes cargo boat to help export food produced in Reg. 1

A cargo boat should be used to help transport food produced in Region One and other areas to Parika, Region Three where the new regional ferry is expected to operate from, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha said on Monday.

The regional ferry is a venture among Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. Guyana’s President, Dr. Irfaan Ali recently announced that the ferry, when in Guyana, will operate out of Parika.

“As the President rightly said, next two or three months, we will have the ferry service coming to Guyana that will go to Barbados and Trinidad and it will run out of Parika; and Region One is an area we are hoping all the produce can come (from) there for us to export.

“We are looking to do a cargo boat to bring out people’s produce from Region One and other parts of the country,” Mustapha told reporters at the sidelines of an event on Monday.

The move to possibly utilise a cargo boat comes days after the President visited Region One, Guyana’s northernmost region and announced plans to expand food production there.

Coffee, coconuts, breadfruit, cassava, citrus and spices are among the crops that the government wants to push in the region and Mustapha indicated that funds have already been committed to this.

He said these are crops the residents also wanted to grow more of in their region.