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Restructuring of the Windward Islands Banana Industry - Windward Islands

Background

The Windward Islands have been a traditional supplier of bananas to the UK, and enjoy a preferential access quota to the European Market of 294,000 tonnes. But their market share has been seriously eroded as other suppliers have responded to the challenges of the single European Market by improving the quality of their product and the effectiveness of their market penetration.

Agro-ecological and technical constraints have contributed to low productivity and poor fruit quality in the Windward Islands. But it has been recognised that institutional weakness, indebtedness, cash flow problems and failure to implement organisational and technical change have all compounded the industry's deficiencies. Following studies and extensive consultations which have highlighted these problems, the Directorate-General for Development in the European Commission agreed to provide managerial, financial and technical assistance for the restructuring of the Windward Islands banana industry.

It has been recognised that the information systems of the banana growers' associations (BGA) and of WIBDECO "are in need of upgrading in order to provide better management and financial information&; and the technical assistance team therefore included the provision of services by a number of information specialists.

MTL Consult supervised the information systems components of the project, which involved the introduction of new systems in the following areas:

• Grower Management, including the introduction of bar-coding to allow each individual box to be followed through the system from reception in the Windwards to sale in a UK supermarket.
• Inventory Control
• Financial Accounting
• Extension Management
• Office Automation

Objectives

Overall terms of reference for the team of information specialists were as follows:

• consult with the BGA General Managers, Financial Controllers and other appropriate staff to more closely define the expected output of the systems
• draw up specifications for the hard- and soft-ware for each national and regional institution and/or unified regional system
• advise on the appropriate 'off-the-shelf' soft- and hard-ware to cater for the management structures and systems required by the management personnel
• if necessary modify or create appropriate software
• assist the project manager in accessing the appropriate materials
• install and test the equipment and soft-ware for each national and regional institution
• train a cadre of staff competent in the use of the soft- and hard-ware
• provide short-term input to fine tune systems

Further Information
For further information, see the website www.wibdeco.com.