Gammon: No secrecy on cocoa divestment
Published:Wednesday | January 18, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Avia Collinder, Business Writer
Cocoa representatives are pushing back at suggest-ions that growers have been excluded from plans being drafted for the divestment of state-owned assets.
Kent Gammon, the head of the Cocoa Industry Board of Jamaica enterprise team, says the divestment process, which was stalled for want of funding, was only recently re-energised with the sourcing of financing "approximately three to four weeks ago of approximately J$5 million", through the Development Bank of Jamaica.
The funds will pay for independent consultancy services on the privatsation of the cocoa industry in Jamaica, said Gammon.
The Cocoa Industry Board assets to be divested, he said, are worth approximately J$500 million, including the Richmond and Orange River farms.
"This was information shared with the divestment committee members of which he (Clayton Williams) was a part. This information was not secret," Gammon said, in response to a story on Sunday regarding claims by Williams, the president of the Jamaica Cocoa Farmers Association (JCFA), that the group was being left out of plans to privatise the sector.
Gammon, who is an attorney by profession ,was named chairman of the Cocoa Industry Board Divestment/Restructuring Committee in Jun e 2009. When the work of the committee was completed, he was appointed chair of the Cocoa Industry Board Enterprise/Divestment Committee in April 2011. The latter committee remains intact, he said.
Gammon said Williams and two other JCFA representatives, as members of the initial committee that Gammon chaired, attended 10 meetings dating from September 8, 2009 to October 12, 2010.
"Clayton Williams would have been aware of the divestment timetable that was public knowledge, in any event," he said.
"I asked him and others several times for their comments on the divestment, and he shared same with me."
Williams last week said the JCFA had only been told informally of the divestment, and that the group, whose membership extends to 1,000 growers, was being "excluded" from the process.
He also pushed for the Ministry of Agriculture to offer JCFA seats on the cocoa agency's board, saying it was the only legally registered group of cocoa growers. The law allows the minister to appoint three representatives from the community of registered growers.
Last night, Williams said in response to Gammon that his participation was limited to the committee that was responsible for the deregulation of the industry, which dealt only with legislation.
"There was another committee formed for the divestment to which we were not invited ... . We do not know which assets these are or the process being pursued," he said.
Gammon said the JCFA was not a registered cooperative at the time he chaired the divestment committee, and that he had advised Williams to get registered. He also stated that membership of the JCFA was just 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent of the 8,000 to 10,000 cocoa farmers nationally.
Permanent secretary in the agriculture ministry, Donovan Stanberry, said Monday that the disposal of the Cocoa Board assets would be done transparently through public tenders.
The process, he said, has not yet begun.
"Any group which is duly constituted will be considered during the tender process. There will be no predetermination and no discrimination. Each must show evidence of ability to finance and management capacity. The same will be true of the JCFA," he said.
In response to the association's charges of exclusion from the Cocoa Board's directors, Stanberry said the newly appointed minister of agriculture, Roger Clarke, would have been meeting with the heads of all commodity boards and agriculture organisations on Tuesday, January 17, a process which would facilitate consideration of members on new boards.
"The JCFA is a new organisation; they have never previously indicated to us a wish to be on the board. The practice has been, over time, to place cocoa farmers on that board," said the agriculture official.
Gammon said the JCFA head's claim of non-inclusion was disrespectful, ill-conceived and an incorrect characterisation aimed at pushing an agenda of control.