Interest in cannabis business high

There is growing interest from investors in the burgeoning Barbados medicinal cannabis industry, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Indar Weir has indicated.

The number of applications to the Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Authority (BMCLA) has more than doubled over the last two months since the application processes opened on January 18, 2021.

Weir made the announcement in Parliament on Tuesday as he participated in debate on the 2020/2021 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure and outlined some of the achievements of his ministry over the past year.

Just five days after the application process started there were 15 draft applications and one completed application.

Reporting on the progress Tuesday, Weir said: “When we launched on January 18, we were starting to receive applications at pace. To date . . . we have 45 draft applications.

“It means you have expressed an interest. You want to know more so you are talking to the cannabis licensing authority with a view to applying for a licence. We have two applications that were submitted, not approved but the persons have had all their questions answered. They are comfortable this is what they want to do and they want to go through the due diligence process,” Weir told the Chamber.

He did not disclose what categories of licences the draft applications fell into or from where they were coming.

However, while thanking the BMCLA team for their work over the past several months in ensuring the establishment of the industry, Weir indicated that no application was likely to be approved before May.

The time of application to approval and granting of the licence should take a maximum of four months.

“We started in January [and in] February we were in a national pause so we could not have dealt with applications because the cannabis authority was closed and people were working from home. This is March where we have just started to come out. So we don’t have a four-month period yet where we can say the due diligence was done and a licence was issued,” he explained.

The fully completed application in January was for an import licence as well as a tier one cultivation licence – the more affordable cultivation tier, which attracts an application fee of $1,980 and a license fee of $29,700 per acre.

There are six categories of licences under the medical cannabis industry regulations – research and development, exportation, importation, cultivation, transportation and retail distribution.

Each licence will last for five years.

Before a licence is approved and issued, the BMCLA is required to carry out an inspection of the premises from which the applicant will operate or inspect the vehicle to be used to transport cannabis or medical cannabis products. (MM)