Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has described her recent visit to the Kingdom of Morocco as “highly productive”.
Ms. Mottley said she and her officials met with a number of key entities and they signed an agreement that laid out deeper cooperation. She made the comments at a press conference to update the media about her recent official trip overseas.
She continued: “The Moroccans, for example, have been doing soil testing in Barbados for us, to determine how best we can fertilize our soils in order to increase the yields significantly. Food security is going to be as important as water security, as we go forward as a nation in the next few decades.
“In addition to that, they have been donating fertilizer to this country and they will continue. There are a number of scholarships that are going to be made available and we made the point that we are not only going to have these scholarships in academic areas; we want these scholarships in technical and vocational areas.”
Ms. Mottley said the Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Kerrie Symmonds, would begin negotiations for a multilateral air services agreement with Morocco.
She added that Morocco was water scarce for most of its existence, and it was absolutely critical that both countries cooperated with respect to how to conserve and expand the water options.
“They have food security in spite of the absence of water. It is an amazing thing. And they have done all kinds of things from artificial rain…. We are going to work together on tourism development and heritage development and they believe there are some areas where we can help them with respect to our training in hospitality,” she stated.
The Prime Minister also met with cruise line officials, including Carnival Cruise Line, since the country was trying to expand the area of home porting.
“The beauty of those lines coming out of Southampton is that they really represent for us a potential growth area in cruise because they come south,” she explained.
During the media conference, she underscored the importance of training, and disclosed that the national training coordinator would soon be appointed.