Single parents to benefit from importation of special breed of milking cows

Government will be investing heavily in the importation of special breeds of milking cows, which would benefit a number of single parents, specifically mothers along the East Bank corridor.

His Excellency, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who made the disclosure on Sunday at State House, said the PPP/C Government is keen on expanding the dairy industry to meet future demands.

“You are talking about a family earning maybe between five to seven thousand dollars…with the government catalysing this by investing in the capital bringing in the breed of animal and getting people involved and that is part of the holistic plan.

“If you do that throughout, you will be able to produce the milk. You will have milking stations. This is how they do it in many of the countries that have a strong dairy industry and they have milking stations,” the President emphasised.

The initiative, Dr. Ali said will also play an integral role in ensuring food security across the nation.

Government is aggressively pushing to strengthen Guyana’s food safety system and expand its export potential. A portion of the $79.2 million allocated to the Guyana Food Safety Authority this year, will go towards this agenda.

Even in CARICOM, Guyana has already been contributing significantly in reducing the regional food import bill by 25 percent by 2025.

Earlier last year, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Amaya Milk Company, the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) and the Ministry of Agriculture for the construction of a milk processing facility.

The multi-million-dollar facility, which is being constructed at Onverwagt, West Coast Berbice by Canadian-based investor Omkaar Sharma, saw an initial investment of $150 million.

While Guyana is open for more investments, President Ali has always emphasised that Guyanese must be able to benefit as well.

“…but to ensure we get the feed in to this facility, we have to bring in a special breed of milking cows and we have to bring in a lot of them, thousands. So, while we may have the mainstream farmers, I am looking at the East Bank corridor in which we can get single parents for example, single mothers and they could have two cows,” President Ali explained.

The government continues to create an environment for local producers to benefit from the increasing demand for meat, coming from the thriving oil and gas companies, as well as other local businesses.

Budget 2022 allocated $977.3 million to the Guyana Livestock Development Authority, which is an increase of $171 million from the previous year’s allocation.