Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Hon. Floyd Green (seated 4th from left), along with (seated from left) Chief Executive Officer at the Agro-Investment Corporation (AIC), Vivion Scully; Director of Projects at Champion Industrial Equipment and Supplies Limited, Courtney Harford and Managing Director at the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Omar Sweeney, sign contracts for the AIC’s Irrigation Transmission Force Main and Equipping Project. Standing and observing the signing (from left) are Program Lead at the World Bank Group, Mr. Emre Ozaltin; Managing Director at Beckford & Dixon Limited, Everard Dixon; Director of Finance and Corporate Planning at the National Irrigation Commission, Mrs. Lillian Smith and Director of the Planning, Projects Monitoring Evaluation & Research Division at the National Environmental Planning Agency, Ainsworth Carroll. The occasion was the Contract Signing Ceremony of the AIC’s Irrigation Transmission Force Main and Equipping Project, at Ebony Park, Clarendon held at the Ministry’s Hope Gardens offices in St. Andrew, on April 11.

For Immediate Release
April 12, 2024

$106,000,000 irrigation project to be executed in Ebony Park, Clarendon

The Government of Jamaica (GOJ) will be expending over 106,000,000 million Jamaican dollars to put over 93 acres of arable land in Ebony Park, Clarendon, under irrigation through the Agro-Investment Corporation’s (AIC) Irrigation Transmission Force Main and Equipping Project.
The project will involve the installation of approximately 1.8 kilometres of force transmission main and pump switch gear that will bring the Ebony Park Agro Park into total production, increasing productivity and profitability.
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Hon. Floyd Green, said in his address at the contract signing event held at the Ministry’s headquarters at Hope Gardens on April 11 that the project will “fulfil the original intent of the Agro parks.”
He adds that he has charged the AIC to ensure that all Agro Parks are climate resilient and outfitted with the relevant infrastructure to maximise land usage and overall productivity.

The agriculture minister emphasised that this project is the first of many such projects to come as the government remains committed to remedying the challenges affecting the sector.
“The same challenges that I speak of in Ebony Park are the same challenges that we have in some of our other Agro Parks. The difference is that we are not turning a blind eye to these challenges. We are going to fix these challenges so that we can truly move productivity and truly be able to feed our nation,” Green outlined.

The Agro-Investment Corporation’s (AIC) Irrigation Transmission Force Main and Equipping Project is one of many projects being executed under the Jamaica Social Investment Fund’s (JSIF) Second Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI II).
REDI II is financed by a US$40 million loan from the World Bank to the GOJ to facilitate initiatives and projects in the agriculture and tourism sectors.

-30-

• ‹ Previous
• Next ›

Page