Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise holds program management review session under new Chief Agriculture Officer Dr. Victoriano Pascual

Photo Credit: MAFSE

By Rubén Morales Iglesias:

With new Acting Chief Agriculture Officer (CAO) Dr Victoriano Pascual at the helm, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise on Friday held a program management review session at its headquarters at the National Agriculture and Trade Showgrounds in Belmopan.

MAFSE said in a social media post that the Ministry’s personnel met on Friday “to report, evaluate and strategize as they discussed 2021-22 programmatic work plans”.

The session was led by MAFSE Advisor Hugh O-Brien.

“The objective of the session was to review the program management model which was implemented in March 2021 and to see how it can be fine-tuned to improve the overall performance of the Ministry, achieve greater outputs, and contribute to further growth in the agriculture sector,” said O’Brien in an exclusive interview with Breaking Belize News (BBN).

O’Brien made a presentation on the current agricultural development strategy of the Ministry and its relationship to the agricultural policies outlined in Plan Belize.

“I’m pleased with the positive feedback obtained from the program managers as they generally felt that the new model was working well and would work better with some tweaking that included setting more medium- and long-term verifiable targets, frequent reporting, better coordination, and continuous evaluation,” O’Brien told BBN.

The program management review session, opened by MAFSE’s Chief Executive Officer Servulo Baeza, was one of the first major staff development activities undertaken by new Acting CAO Victor Pascual.

MAFSE will now work on implementing the strategies on the way forward.

“You know we have different strategies and plans and so forth and all of our programs have their work plan that we try our best to align with these plans and strategies … not only with the Ministry but with other partners as well,” said Dr Pascual who had earlier said the session with CEO and senior personnel within the Ministry would discuss a better flow of communication and coordination.

“The plan is that we must first strengthen our internal process of communication and coordination between the different programs and program coordinators.

“There’s a lot that can be done and that needs to get done. We have several programs and we have several program coordinators. We need to strengthen those and ensure that we try to align as best as possible. It is there to some extent, but I believe that the output of the ministry can be greater and also more impactful if we strengthen the internal processes that we have,” Dr Pascual noted.

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