AMC tenants served notice
Published:Monday | August 21, 2023 | 12:08 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
President of the Jamaica Agricultural Society Lenworth Fulton has described the Government’s plan to fast-track divestment of the Agricultural Marketing Corporation (AMC) complex at 188 Spanish Town Road, Kingston, which is due for completion by the first quarter of next year, as “a negative move for agriculture”.
In a letter dated August 17, tenants were advised that the divestment process has started and the Government is “conducting the necessary due diligence to identify an appropriate modality for divestment, after which an investor will be identified through a transparent, competitive process”.
“While the GOJ (Government of Jamaica) anticipates completion of the divestment exercise by March 2024, we will provide additional updates along the way,” reads, in part, the letter addressed to ‘Dear Valued Tenants’ from the Agro-Invest Corporation.
Betrayal of farmers
Fulton described the undertaking as a betrayal of farmers, following on the promise by the agriculture ministry that the facility, which was previously used to package exports and process produce for local distribution, would be transformed into a modern, agro-processing facility.
In April 2019, it was reported that Cabinet had received a submission from the then Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries seeking to reverse plans to sell the AMC complex.
Addressing the 2019 Jamaica 4-H Clubs National Achievement Expo at the Denbigh Agricultural Showground in May Pen, Clarendon, on April 5, the then minister, Audley Shaw, declared, “We are creating a modern agro-processing centre [under] a public-private partnership [arrangement so] that every young person who wants factory space will be able to get it at the AMC. We need to create the factory and refrigeration space.”
The nine-acre property was put up for sale in 2016 and divestment efforts really picked up pace in 2019 as the Government sought to woo local investors, most of whom carrying out some of the functions previously done by the AMC, according to then Acting CEO of the Agro-Invest Corporation, Michael Pryce.
He noted that the old AMC model was discarded from the early 1980s as being unsustainable, adding that the role it performed as a government-operated, centralised marketing and distribution system was taken up by the private sector in the form of consolidators, exporters and middlemen, including “higglers”.
“I think revival of the AMC is more likely to move to a much greater role for the private sector in this process as the main players, while [the] Government will play an enabling and facilitatory role,” he added.
The plan, as outlined by Shaw in his 2019 contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament, included privatisation and modernisation under the public-private partnership model, as one of a network of six agro-processing centres to be spread across Jamaica.
The other five centres proposed were GraceKennedy’s new centre at Denbigh in Clarendon; Lydford Logistics in St Ann; JamIsland Processing in Williamsfield, Manchester, operated by entrepreneurs Winston Miller and Shereen Smith; Caribbean Producers Jamaica; and Rainforest Seafoods, owned by Brian Jardim.