Shaw green-lights CIB acquisition of Water Valley property

After finally getting the green light to acquire the 1,000-acre Water Valley property in St Mary, the Coconut Industry Board (CIB) now finds itself saddled with two non-performing assets in the parish which the Government has failed to offload after years of trying.

In granting approval for the farmers' organisation to purchase the property on which it plans to establish its flagship world-class processing plant for coconut water, oil and other value-added products, Audley Shaw, minister of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, handed the statutory body a gift-wrapped mixed bag containing the 700-acre Unity Farm property as well as the defunct Richmond Cocoa Fermentary during the CIB annual general meeting at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, on Saturday.

SPURNED $35M OFFER

Ironically, the National Housing Trust (NHT) last year spurned a $35 million offer from the CIB as unacceptably low, after failing to attract investors to take up its offer for land it promoted as ideal for housing development. This is much less than the $62.3 million paid for the property in 2003.

The fermentary, which should have been divested in keeping with the dissolution of the

CIB, whose regulatory functions should have been remitted to the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA), is still on the government books.

In its offer to assist the Government in meeting its obligations for the July 1, 2017 startup date for JACRA, the coconut growers had also negotiated for other non-performing cocoa assets in Clarendon, as well as a warehouse on Marcus Drive in Kingston, from which it planned to export value-added products. However, those were excluded from the package.

Despite this, the lucrative window of opportunity provided by the purchase of the Water Valley farm will more than compensate for the accompanying non-performing assets to its portfolio and is, therefore, well worth the gamble, according to attorney-at-law Frank Phipps.

"What we got now is the freedom to do our own development. Before that we couldn't do it. Samuda stood in the way, said him not signing," said Phipps, referring to former minister with responsibility for agriculture Karl Samuda.

"Now, we have got the freedom we've been asking for ... and the shares still belong to the board because the law is not going to be repealed, and that board is now going to form a subsidiary commercial arm, and we have got the ability to do the commercial activities free from any government support," added Phipps, a long-standing CIB board director.