17th Annual General Meeting – Santo Domingo – Caribbean Millers’ Association

17th Annual General Meeting – Santo Domingo

The Caribbean Millers’ Association (CMA) will host its 17^th Annual General Meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Santo Domingo from December 3, 2013 under the theme “Food Safety & Consumer Confidence -Our Role…… Our Responsibility”.

The CMA comprises Flour Milling and allied industries in the Caribbean region and Central America and will see delegates from Barbados, Belize, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadelope, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique , St. Vincent & the Grenadines , Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago. There will also be involvement of Associate members from the USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Latin America and France.

The CMA was set up in 1986 with the following aims in mind:

To develop the Caribbean Wheat Milling Industry
To facilitate exchange of experience and technology among member countries
To promote integration, cooperation, goodwill and defense of common interest of the Caribbean Milling industry
To review problems of members and actively collaborate to solve them
To promote rationalization, development and progress of milling activities in the Region
To sponsor, promote and organize conventions, meetings, trade shows and training for its members.
To establish a regional information network to exchange information on economic policies that affect the production, industrialization and marketing of wheat, other grains and flour

The current President of the CMA is Roopnarine (Bert) Sukhai, Managing Director of the National Milling Company of Guyana. Other members of the executive are 1^st Vice President Karlene Nicholls of ADM/Barbados Flour Mills, Derrick Nembhard, General Manager of ADM/Jamaica Flour Mills and 2^nd Vice President, Tom Sowden of Kansas City Bags. The CMA Secretariat is located in Kingston Jamaica.

The Association has good support from US Wheat Associates, the CWB (formerly the Canadian Wheat Board) and other Associate Members supplying the industry with raw materials and packaging material.

Host of the conference this year is Molinos Modernos and will see some 50 delegates attending the Conference. The conference will begin with an opening ceremony on Tuesday, December 3 beginning at 9.00 a.m. where the Minister of Commerce of the Dominican Republic is expected to give the feature address and open the conference. Mr. Bert Sukhai will be making a presentation on Food Safety.

Among the speakers at this year’s conference will be Mr. Ramesh Dookhoo and Dr. Patrick Antoine.

Mr. Dookhoo, former Private Sector Commission Chairman and the newly elected President of the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce (CAIC), will be making a presentation on the role of the CAIC as a key player in garnering international funding for private sector projects and to facilitate greater trade and development for the private sector in the Caribbean.

Dr. Antoine will be speaking on the challenges facing the flour milling industry in the Caribbean and the need to plan ahead to meet these challenges.

There will also be a presentation on the resurgence of the rice industry in Guyana and Suriname and what the likely implications for the future are.