New Board elected to manage VincyKlus

A new team has been elected to manage the affairs of this country’s lone agribusiness/agro processing cluster, Vincyklus, for the next three years.

A recent general meeting of the cluster saw the SVG Bureau of Standards’ Simeon Bacchus being elected president of Vincyklus, with Desrie Lewis of the Ministry of Agriculture being returned as vice-president.{{more}}

The Centre for Enterprise Inc’s (CED) Nisha Glasgow remained as coordinator/general secretary with Madanna Douglas as assistant secretary.

Elizabeth Cyrus, of Cyrus Chips, was elected treasurer, with Shonette Gurley as assistant treasurer. Keisha Phillips returned as public relations officer (PRO), with Alita Garraway, of Aurora’s, as assistant PRO.

VincyKlus was founded on September 16, 2012, under a special initiative by the CED through its EU-funded Business Gateway Project. It was officially launched on November 10, 2012.

The main objective of Vincyklus is to increase and strengthen the capability of individual producers through export development training, marketing and promotions, and information support, in order to enhance and develop the export capacity of firms so that they can take full advantage of market access opportunities. Its membership comprises of individuals, enterprises, institutions and agencies that constitute the value chain for agri-business development in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Meanwhile, Vincyklus is set to hold a General Meeting next Thursday, May 5, at 9 a.m. at the CED Conference Room. This will see the new Board presenting its action plan for 2016 to its members.

Newly elected President, Simeon Bacchus, is set to represent the cluster at a regional consultation on the Development of a Regional Policy Framework for the herbs and spices industry, scheduled for May 9 -10 in Trinidad.

Vincyklus was invited to participate in the consultation by the CARICOM Secretariat.

CARICOM has identified several priority commodity groups for promotion at the regional level, and herbs and spices, roots and tubers, and small ruminants are among them.

For each of these, a working group has been established to coordinate the technical and other inputs needed to develop specific products and to implement specific actions.

With support from the 10th EDF Agricultural Policy Programme (APP), a consultancy has been launched with the aim of developing a regional policy framework for herbs and spices, proposals for a coordinating mechanism and a business plan for the sustainability of the mechanism.