EVENT DESCRIPTION
THEME: Continuing the Strengthening the Regional Private Sector Mechanisms for Providing Information, Increasing Knowledge, Linking Stakeholders and Attracting Investments.
EVENT CONTENT
The Caribbean Agribusiness Forum, is an annual event hosted by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in collaboration with the Caribbean Agri-Business Association (CABA) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), aimed at providing a medium primarily for private sector stakeholders to “discuss and engage in business” that can have an early impact on investment, production and trade in the Region.
The Fora in 2014 and 2015 were largely focussed on building knowledge and sharing success stories amongst agribusiness. The 2016 forum, held in January 2017, with the theme “Strengthening the Caribbean Agribusiness Sector and Expanding Markets Through SME’S Business Development “focussed on directly facilitating production and trade. It was in effect a “Business Meeting” involving specific SME firms that have been trained in HACCP certification, that are working under the CABA sponsored “Collective Regional Export Strategy’.
The strategy is aimed at facilitating SME’s to act collectively in attacking markets and in procurement of inputs and services. A critical part of the strategy is the plan to have the firms market and promote some of their products under a common regional “Brand or Mark” and to share the high cost of servicing export markets and brand building. These products will be marketed through the Caribbean Agri-Business Export Company (CABEXCO) which has been established for this purpose.
