Agriculture Ministry borrows money to bail out rice millers

Mar 23, 2014 News

The long awaited meeting between frustrated Essequibo rice farmers and the Minister of Agriculture, Leslie Ramsammy got underway, Thursday when the Minister engaged farmers on the Coast.
As part of having a forum with the Minister, farmers who were owed from the last crop received payments. That process was expected to be completed on Friday.
During the meetings, farmers were assured that some $270M was set aside through a loan. At Better Success a number of farmers were issued cheques.
The money came from the bank as a loan to millers for the payment to rice farmers. Ramsammy said that the Government is not too inclined to continue the practice by bailing out millers. However, he encouraged farmers to establish a cordial relation with millers to resolve pressing issues facing them.
Ramsammy acknowledged that while he too as Minister of Agriculture does not have all of the answers, he extended an invitation to farmers, especially those from the Region to meet with him in an attempt to foster better understanding between them and his Ministry.
The Minister believes that Guyana can compete with any other country, since it continues to produce both quality rice and cheap price.
He noted that he was not in a position to demand of farmers what to accept or millers what to pay to farmers. He said that he can, however, request that farmers and millers orchestrate a plan and work cordially to iron out the pressing issues that continues to face farmers, since the issue of paddy pricing is a private transaction by millers.
The Minister warned that if the trend continues where Government has to extract loans through the banks to rescue millers, the situation, he believes, would eventually develop into an unhealthy trend.
Venezuela, Ramsammy said, is an important market to Guyana. Thus, while Venezuela offers a good price now, the price would not always be “sustainable”. He said other markets are being pursued by his Ministry.
The rice industry, Ramsammy said, is expected to export between 470,000 and 490,000 tons of rice.
In 2008, Guyana produced 330,000 tons of paddy. Five years later there was a record 535,000 tons, a whopping landslide increase of almost 200,000 tons over the years.
One disgruntled farmer said that had it not been for the prolonged protests by farmers, two weeks in succession, the Minister would not had engaged them. He said that the situation farmers continue to face is enormous and the efforts by the Ministry are not amusing, especially since the Ministry sees the farmers as being aligned to a “political group”.
Alliance For Change councilor and also president of the Essequibo Farmers Association, Neath Ram, is again calling for a co-operative trust fund to be set up where farmers would be given an opportunity to purchase individual shares.
Ram further suggested to the panel that the Government should set up a fund through NICIL whereby millers would be able to access finance readily in order to pay farmers.
Mechanisms should be put in place by the Agriculture Ministry to initiate a plan where some fifty percent of the millers’ earnings should be deposited in the bank before payments are being made to farmers, Ram said.
Accompanying the Minister were Junior Agriculture Minister, Alli Baksh; Region Two Chairman, Parmanand Persaud; Vice Chairman, Vishnu Samaroo; and General Manager of the Guyana Rice Development Board, Jagnarine Singh. (Yannason Duncan).

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Agriculture Ministry borrows money to bail out rice millers

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