Rice Producers’ Action Committee claims GRDB owes $1.9B to millers

Jun 10, 2015 News

…says price of paddy to drop even further

By Nicholas Peters
Guyana’s rice industry is in crisis, according to Chairman of the Rice Producers’ Association Action Committee (RPAAC), Jinnah Rahman, and milling specialist Dr. Turhane Doerga, with the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) owing approximately $1.9B to millers throughout the country.

Chairman of the Rice Producers Association’s Action Committee, Jinnah Rahman and milling specialist Dr Turhane Doerga

Further, as it stands, future projections show that the industry will not recover soon enough, without drastic changes in how it is managed.
These claims would be contrary to the assurances made during the period in office of the previous administration, which projected that the rice industry was prosperously progressing in the past few years.
According to the duo, they were informed of the rice industry’s state by a senior official of the GRDB during a meeting, yesterday morning. They said that the GRBD official confirmed their suspicions that rice would be producing at over 200,000 tonnes surplus in this coming crop due to the lack of international buyers, apart from Venezuela.
The men explained that such a surplus of paddy will lead to further decline in how bags of paddy are bought from farmers. Prices from the last harvest showed that farmers were receiving around $2,700 per bag of paddy, which many of them complained was not enough to cover production cost. However, with this latest revelation, Dr. Doerga is projecting that paddy bag prices will fall to $2000.
According to him, for farmers to gain profitable yields, paddy should be bought at $3,000 per bag. He further explained that without international buyers, coupled with a massive surplus in produce and no profitable funds, Guyana’s rice industry is “worse than we think”.
“The major problem is that they said that the money was there and that there was no problem in the rice industry. (The GRDB official) confirmed this morning to the millers that they have no money to pay millers,” related Dr. Doerga. He continued to explain that if millers are not paid then rice farmers cannot be paid as they should be.
This revelation was discovered by the Rice Millers Association (RMA), after requesting a meeting with the Board. According to Dr. Doerga, the RMA is going through a complete reorganisation in light of a change in administration. He said the meeting was set up to address concerns of millers with relation to the international market, as the association is looking to be more directly involved in exporting rice to foreign buyers.
“Really and truly the millers are the ones who are supposed to be getting the market… (Yesterday) the same people who said that they (the GRDB) had a market, confirmed that, with the exception of Venezuela, there is no market for rice,” said Dr. Doerga.
This is despite rice production being at an all-time high since 2013 when the country’s overall production surpassed 500,000 tonnes. According to Jagnarine Singh, General Manager of GRDB, this year’s first quarter projections are set to surpass the 313,000-tonne goal by 42,000 tonnes. Singh was quoted by this publication in a May 29 article as saying the year’s first quarter harvest is 94.7 percent finished, with 355,000 tonnes already harvested.
In said article, head of the Guyana Rice Producers Association (GRPA), Dharamkumar Seeraj, “expressed optimism” that this year’s yields will remain ahead of last year’s first quarter. Seeraj was also quoted as confirming that exports, under the Petro Caribe deal, to Venezuela were, as well as exports to the Caribbean, Central American and Europeans “going on apace”. He added that exportation figures exceeded last year’s.
However, when RMA members inquired about how payments to millers, and ultimately the farmers, would be done, it was revealed that, at the time, the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance were making arrangements for the payment.
Dr. Doerga explained that when he asked where the funds from the Petro Caribe deal were, which amounts to US$119M per crop, the GRDB official responded that the funds were allocated but that the monies were not in the Petro Caribe account.
Efforts by this publication to reach the heads of the GDRB, RPA or officials from the Agriculture Ministry for comments on the RPAAC report were proven to be unsuccessful.