(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The provision of information on agricultural products will come under scrutiny next week in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, when stakeholders meet to chart the way forward in the implementation of a Regional Agriculture Market Intelligence System (RAMIS).

A Workshop on the Establishment of a Regional Agriculture Market Intelligence System will take place 15-17 February at the Trinidad Hilton Hotel is one of the initiatives undertaken by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat to boost agriculture and promote agribusiness in the Region.

A Market Intelligence System will be the avenue to provide objective information on the regional markets; correct market information deficiencies; inform on entry requirements in the CARICOM market, among other services. The information intervention can shape opportunities in regional markets, and influence consumer tastes by providing accurate and information about available regional foods, particularly in terms of nutritional content.

The workshop will be funded under the Caribbean Integrated Support Programme (CISP) Ninth EDF arrangements. The Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) are among the several institutions collaborating with the CARICOM Secretariat in this exercise.

The objectives of the workshop are: agreement among Member States on the scope and coverage of the regional MIS; definition of the roles of various national and regional organizations in the establishment and operation of the system, and arrival at a plan of action which would include time phasing and resource estimation.

Participants will work to advance the creation of the regional system by drawing up a plan of action including priorities regarding content, the general structure and resource requirements.

CARICOM Agriculture Ministers had agreed that the RAMIS should be implemented drawing on the experiences of regional entities, particularly the National Agriculture Market Information System (NAMIS) operated by Trinidad and Tobago’s National Agricultural Marketing and Development Corporation (NAMDEVCO) which is the most advanced market information system in the Caribbean. Jamaica has a system called JAMIS while Guyana and Saint Lucia have been collaborating with NAMDEVCO on developing theirs.

UNCTAD has offered to provide its InfoShare software, which could for the basis for assembling information at the regional level,

The workshop comes on the heels of discussions on the requirements of a regional system held with Member States at the last Meeting of the Market Information Organisation of the Americas (MIOA) held in Trinidad and Tobago in December 2010.

The meeting will also take the opportunity to examine UNCTAD’s proposed Sustainability Claims Portal, a system that is being designed to provide objective information on various certification schemes such as “organic” and “fair trade”.

CONTACT: piu@caricom.org