Minister orders March deadline for agricultural plan

Agriculture and Livestock Minister Benny Allan has tasked the department’s sub-sectors to complete the National Agriculture Plan’s strategic plan and corporate plan by March.
He highlighted the department’s challenges and achievements for this year and plans for next year during a press conference in Port Moresby yesterday.
“We need to develop a national plan on which we have some consultants working,” Allan said. “We have a team of five who are currently working on the five-year plan.
“Early January, they will start working on the agriculture sector plan.
“They will be working with all the sub-sector managing-directors, chief executive officers and stakeholders for one or two months.
“We plan to launch that around March when everything is completed.”
Allan said this year, the Government had given them more than K600 million, one of the biggest budgets so far.
“We are not saying we got everything but we were allocated K600 million,” he said.
“Out of the K600 million, most of it was released to the sub-sectors and the department.”
Allan said he was expecting managing directors and chief executive officers of the sub-sectors to submit their annual reports by early next year. This is so he can report back to Government and the people on how they had carried out their programmes and projects.
Allen said the budget for next year was about K500 million.
“Using some of these money, our sub-sectors like Cocoa Board, Coffee Industry Corporation and Fresh Produce Development Agency are working directly with the farmers,” he said. “They have partnered with farmers and gone out to give them training, workshops and nurseries.”
Allan said most of the sub-sectors had been meeting deadlines and had worked very well this year.
He said next year, they wanted to take ownership of the sub-sectors and serve the Government with commitment.