The health situation resulting from COVID-19 and its inherent economic implications demand comprehensive digital solutions at both the national, regional and multilateral levels. Amidst the measures to contain the pandemic, maintaining the fluidity of international food trade is key to ensuring the supply of markets and the revitalization of economies. For this reason, the Regional Agricultural Market Intelligence and Monitoring System (SIMMAGRO) of the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama is presented as a strategic and useful tool to facilitate intraregional agricultural trade.
With the aim of providing daily updated and more precise information on basic agricultural products, Central American countries are at the forefront in the use of digital platforms for price analysis and monitoring with the SIMMAGRO virtual platform.
The virtual platform, developed with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is implemented in the countries that make up the Central American Integration System (SICA).
Knowing the price behavior of the main products in the largest sales outlets is of vital importance for decision-making on market opportunities, especially for family farming, which produces a significant part of the basic food basket.
In this way, the regional tool, connected to national systems, allows for the generation of standardized information on prices, foreign trade and production of 40 basic products such as grains, fruits and vegetables, from the countries of Central America.
“Information is a strategic asset for decision makers and companies. SIMMAGRO is particularly useful for them and for users who need to assess the health of agricultural markets,” he said. Melvin Redondo, Secretary General of SIECA, in the last virtual seminar of 2020 “Analysis of agricultural markets in Central America: the new SIMMAGRO platform”.
In this same line, Oswaldo Segura, representative of the Secretariat of the Central American Agricultural Council (SECAC)), added: "The post-COVID-19 recovery plan for the agricultural sector identifies knowledge management as one of its components and SIMMAGRO supports these efforts to have timely information to make decisions."
“The SIMMAGRO platform fills a gap in information that is very relevant for the region. Central America is an economy specialized in the production and marketing of agricultural products; monitoring key variables of agricultural markets is a relevant task,” said the experts during the presentation.
Thus, the tool can be considered a “Regional Public Good” since it seeks commercial integration, provides technological infrastructure for trade facilitation and contributes to the recovery of the region’s economy.
“SIMMAGRO is a public good of magnitude that will play a very important role in 2021 with respect to how to report to achieve a recovery with transformation, as the World Bank says. In addition, it will keep food systems alive between countries, to comply with food security, and also the large financial flows that guarantee decision-making,” he stressed. Adoniram Sanches, the FAO representative.
More information:
http://www.des.simmagro.sieca.int/public/#/home
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