Fiji bid to cut Food import bill

by Riteshni Singh

Fiji Times - Thursday, April 22, 2010

FIJI aims to reduce the national food import bill from $105million to $21million over a three-year period.

Ministry of Health head Dr Neil Sharma, who is representing Fiji at the Pacific Food Summit in Vanuatu, told delegates the aim could be achieved by increased private sector investment in agriculture, creation of market, control on pests and diseases spread, development of infrastructure and value adding.

Dr Sharma said some of the outcomes of the 2009 Food Symposium was that the summit agreed that NDCs and micronutrient deficiencies were a major threat to the Fiji economy.

"All stakeholders agreed that food security is everyone's responsibility and the public and private sector should maintain dialogue on issues such as improving food production and quality and how government can assist to improve food availability," he said.

He said the stakeholders agreed to eight areas that needed immediate attention to ensure food security and economic development.

"The eight areas were education and training, regulations and standards, production/research and development, trade and marketing, partnership, organisation strengthening, infrastructure and facilities and land tenure," he said.

Dr Sharma said the Ministry of Agriculture's major challenges were security of land tenure, loss of productive land to residential development, poor land management that led to deforestation and loss of biodiversity.

He said the purpose of the summit was to determine how the public and private-civic sectors could work together to improve the health benefits of improving food security. "Food security and safety is not the business of the Ministry of Health alone. The Government relies on the support of all stakeholders, working together in partnership to achieve the national goal."

He said Fiji organised a national symposium on food security and export-led growth for resources-based sectors last week.