Thriving rice industry benefitting Govt associates and friends – says former Govt. advisor

Mar 17, 2015 News

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…gap must be closed between Venezuela rice sales and return to farmers
Venezuela’s new rice contract may have helped lift some weight from Guyana’s shoulders, but the country

is still hoping that recently announced foreign markets will pull through. They want to help the country record its history making paddy production of more than a million tons.
Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, predicted that paddy production this year, will for the first time ever, exceed a million tons. However, the existing problem is that the country does not have the markets to purchase the load. Some stakeholders are holding the government responsible for this continuous challenge.
Former Presidential Advisor and financial analyst, Ramon Gaskin, has charged the government with intervening in a booming private sector industry and providing it with subsides that it does not need. While supporting this view, APNU’s economic point man and former Finance Minister Carl Greenidge, also accused the government of spanning a massive gap between what is received for rice sold and what is received by rice farmers.
The basis for such actions, both parties agreed, is for the enrichment of associates and friends of a government which seems to be using rice proceeds particularly that from the Venezuela/Guyana PetroCaribe rice for oil arrangement, in areas that do not benefit the growth and productivity of the rice sector.
Gaskin explained that rice production in Guyana is at its highest ever. “Yet we are hearing from time to time that the government has to intervene to pay paddy producers for paddy delivered to millers who did not pay them.”
“This is entirely ridiculous,” the former advisor stated. “These millers mill paddy, get rice and export it, so there is no reason why the government must have any involvement between the paddy producers and the

miller.”
“They have no business using taxpayers’ money to get involved in those issues where the millers did not pay the paddy producers. They are all private businessmen.”
The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) was formulated initially as an oversight and advisory body to the rice sector. However, today the Board engages in the commercial business of the sector, aiding the Agricultural Ministry in locating rice markets and negotiating prices and terms of transactions.
Gaskin maintains, however, that “the rice industry in Guyana is a private sector activity and the government has very little business in the business of private people.”
He gave the analogy that should private exporters fail to pay providers of other commodities, whether the government would step in and use tax payers dollars to pay the debt of those exporter’s.
Gaskin said that the government is “breast feeding and spoon feeding the industry, although it is doing very well.”  “The Administration is babysitting a sector that hardly needs any support from Government or taxpayers.”
The former State advisor noted that the relationships between the industry and Government- linked persons see them benefitting immensely from the rice sector, “hence the need to keep supporting them (financially) all the time.” Pointing out that among other cases, the Guyana Rice Producers’ Association (RPA) General Secretary for instance, is a Parliamentarian of the PPP-led government, Gaskin opined that the Administration seeks to keep its fingers on the sector as its associates continue to benefit, “like spoiled children.”
Greenidge described the rice industry as being “a disaster at the moment.” The former Finance Minister insisted that the gap between the price received by the farmers and that which Venezuela actually pays for rice is too wide; “and at this point,” he continued, “it seems that government is using the money to feather their own beds and help out privileged millers.”
Greenidge agreed that rice is a private industry, “and government is using the money from Venezuela to do all sorts of other things, while some of the money could have gone to enhancing productivity of the rice sector as a sort of incentive to farmers and millers to ensure the quality of rice.”
He went on to say that although money is available to the rice industry because of good prices out of Venezuela, government seems to be diverting the funds to their own ends, and are then coming back to tax payers to raise money to pay off rice farmers for what the millers owe.
Greenidge averaged that while the farmers may be receiving around US$40,000 per ton of paddy, Venezuela’s payment is somewhere around US$180,000 per ton of rice.
As it relates to government sourcing markets for the industry, Greenidge said that there is a historic reasoning behind this since in earlier trade years Guyana was given an adverse reputation because of middlemen providing poor quality rice to the international market; hence government’s involvement in the sector, especially since the commodity plays a significant role in the economy.
However, today’s middlemen, Greenidge said, have taken advantage of the sector since there seems to be major conflicts of interest where persons with economic interests are also making pertinent decisions in this regard.
Greenidge charged however that rice farmers would be better off if they could get a larger slice of the price that comes from Venezuela. He said that government should make more money available to the sector to reduce cost of production through training, fertilizer imports, water management and irrigation among other areas.
This development is necessary because Guyana continues to produce rice at a higher cost than most other major rice producing countries.

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