Focus on capacity building, Govt agencies told

By CLARISSA MOI
GOVERNMENT agencies should have a “commercial sense” to drive forward its agenda in agriculture and small-to-medium enterprise (SME), City Pharmacy Ltd group chairman Sir Mahesh Patel says. Sir Mahesh said yesterday that Government agencies such as the National Agriculture Research Institute (Nari) and Fresh Development Authority (FPDA) should have a commercial arm and engage people and bureaucrats in that space. He said the conversations around local content could go on but the real focus should be on capacity building. “We talk about national content, but in my mind it really should be capacity building,” he said. “We can keep talking about import replacement for tariff protection but first and foremost, let’s not make a mistake. “Let’s build capacity at the back end. “I put it out to the agriculture forum to say can we start mapping farmers? “Can we start looking at supply lines and supply chains because we do have capacity within Papua New Guinea to actually replace it just like how we did with potatoes. “That’s our mission now for things like onions and garlic. “When you talk about onions and garlic, we need aggregation of farmers and we need consistency in supply.
“We need more support and interaction from agencies like Nari and the FPDA.“I seriously believe that they need to have a commercial arm with great research people and bureaucrats. “We’ve got all these agencies but they lack commercial sense.  “As a retailer, we support total PNG participation.”