ARTICLE - GOOD NEWS FOR FARMERS

GOOD NEWS FOR FARMERS AND THE POPULATION
(Haiti Libre) -

Laurent Lamothe, the Minister of Foreign Affairs signed on Wednesday, April 25 at the National Palace, a tripartite agreement of cooperation with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Mr. Temir Porras, and the Ambassador of Argentina in Haiti, M . Marcelo Sebaste, on agriculture, identification and literacy.

This Haiti-Venezuela-Argentina tripartite agreement, concerning among others, a donation of equipment for improving the agricultural sector, equivalent to an amount of 15 million U.S. dollars, including technical assistance.

The equipment provided by Venezuela includes: a set of 100 4 x 4 tractors (80-100 HP); vertical tillage equipment; plow teeth; seeders, disc harrows; sprayers fertilizer spreaders; irrigation pumps - 3 and 4 inches, to exploit small water points submersible pumps, equipment for drip irrigation; water tanks; 10,000 wheelbarrows; 20,000 sets of farming tools; spare parts for maintenance and repair of machinery, and silos to store crops and seeds - (collective and family) will also be distributed to the Haitian authorities to encourage domestic production.

Field visits and regular exchanges will be organized between the Ministry of Agriculture, experts from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) of Argentina and the Venezuelan counterpart, to ensure training and the adequacy of this equipment for the real needs of Haiti's agricultural development; while establishing a state agency in charge of research and agricultural extension.

The signing of this agreement, conducted in the presence of the Ambassador of Argentina to Venezuela, Carlos Cheppi, of technicians from Argentina, Secretary of State for Literacy, the Secretary of State for Literacy, Ms. Milaine Alexandre, and the Director General of the National Office of Identification (ONI), Jean-Baptiste Saint-Cyr, also addresses the capacity of the ONI through a project of identification, whose main objectives are: to create a reliable database of all citizens; modernize the existing system; rehabilitate the regional physical structures; interconnect offices between them and the central office; work for the ratification of the law framework for the integration of the civil state within ONI; equipping ONI with modern equipment of greater capacity; create eight thousand direct jobs, and facilitate the other partner institutions to access information that may be useful in the context of their specific mission.

The literacy component part of this agreement will consist of alphabetising 600,000 people, through the project "Wi mwen kapab", and 400,000 others through the "'alphaprésentiel" based on the reality of each community.

Chancellor Lamothe believes that the strengthening of South-South cooperation can contribute to the sustainable development of Haiti and, in this sense, is committed to increase its efforts to reposition the country as a partner of choice for sister states in the region.