PM Rebuts Mai – Says His Administration is All for Agriculture

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Barrow says that criticism is unfair based on the many factors which are completely out of government’s control. Additionally, he states that any claim that his administration has neglected the agro-productive sector is untrue, since it is this administration which has done the most for stakeholders in that sector.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We are at a point in the cycle where our vulnerabilities in the commodities sector has been shown up but as a consequence of what…disease, all sorts of reasons beyond our control. But we know Mr. Speaker that there is sure to be a recovery, there is sure to be a rebound, and in the meantime the government stands ready to do and is doing all that it can to help the sector through the current problems. They forget that they mentioned citrus…the member for Stann Creek West read a long exegesis on citrus. They forget that it was those same citrus people who stood up one after the other at the Biltmore Hotel before an election to praise this government for having built up the citrus industry. They forget that it was this government that basically they say we did it by destroying the B.S.C.F.A.…well that’s your judgment. The fact is though that it was as a consequence of this government that we were able to have a sugar crop. And you talk about taxation…you know the technicians in terms of this budget wanted to do all sorts of things with GDP, including moving from exempt to fully taxable, but we in Cabinet knew that that change would fall particularly hard on the agricultural producers in the country and so we said no.”