Bio‐diversity Clearing‐House The final component of this Programme will be the Clearing‐House Mechanism (CHM) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This facility is expected to contribute significantly to the implementation of the Convention through the promotion and facilitation of technical and scientific cooperation. The SLARIS needs to be expanded to ensure that timely, reliable and accurate production and marketing information is available to the agricultural sector. This will facilitate import substitution and food security, market demand based production scheduling, and would eventually increase the sector competitiveness through diversification and increased market opportunity. In particular, SLARIS will need to include: Crop Production Monitoring and Market Research (CPMMR) CPMMR will be developed to enable agricultural producers to manage their land and crop production more precisely. Data will be collected and analysed to monitor and improve production levels and farming techniques. It will enable farmers to check the status of their production on a more systematic basis. Extension officers will utilise handheld devices to submit production and farming data from farms. This data will form the input for the Production and Marketing Information System, which will be accessible through the system’s web portal. Crop Import License System (CILS) This system will enable the import and transit of agriculture products such as nursery stock, small lots of seed, cut flowers, plants and plant products, fruits and seeds for consumption. The Crop Import License will be an effective tool to guard against the spread of damaging pests and diseases. Training and Development Project Given the extensive computerisation and systems proposed in this Programme, it is essential to strengthen the information management capabilities of the central ministry and other agencies and organisations in the sector to ensure effective utilisation of the information that will become available for strategic, tactical and operational purposes. As such this Project will focus on training of all participants, within and external to the public sector. [32]