‘This can’t work’

Pandohie cites faults in agricultural authority structure

THE GOVERNMENT’S much-touted Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA), the umbrella organisation under which all former crop commodity services, with the exception of banana, are being subsumed, has no chance of working, according to Richard Pandohie, chief executive officer of the Seprod Group of Companies.

“JACRA needs to be revisited. There are substantial gaps in the conceptualisation and implementation plan. This thing cannot work in its current form,” the businessman told Saturday’s annual general meeting of the Coconut Industry Board, while making it clear he was expressing his personal opinion.

However, Pandohie, who used the event at the Jamaica Conference Centre to announce he had resigned as chairman of JACRA a week ago, said he had arrived at his view after careful study of the plan for implementing JACRA.

Pandohie said that while JACRA, a conditionality of Jamaica’s precautionary standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is conceptually sound, there are fundamental, inherent flaws in the implementation process which are at variance with its intended positive outcomes.

“Every agricultural product has been declining, bar none, and we need to get back to a stage to create an industry with a climate where you can [secure] investment and get growth going again. I think everybody is aligned that way, [but] the problem with Jamaica is that everybody knows what to do, but nobody can get it going,” the business executive admitted.