Latest update March 24th, 2025 7:05 AM
Govt. accepts resignation of Rice Board boss
– entity blamed for misuse of billions of dollars of PetroCaribe Fund
The shakeup of the rice industry is continuing with Government yesterday confirming that it has accepted the
Resigned: Jagnarine Singh
resignation of Jagnarine Singh, General Manager of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB).
The disclosures were made yesterday by Minister of State, Joseph Harmon. He said that the industry has been badly mismanaged.
The official was speaking about the “empty” PetroCaribe Fund which the new Government said that it met when it came to power last month.
GRDB, Harmon said, was complicit or responsible for rice farmers and millers, participating in a multi-billion-dollar rice-for-oil arrangement with neighbouring Venezuela, not being paid in recent times.
Under a special arrangement, Venezuela has been supplying oil to a number of countries, including Guyana. This country would pay part of the monies up front and the rest, at a minimal interest rate, over a 20-year period. Guyana was supposed to deposit the proceeds of the oil sales into the PetroCaribe Fund.
Under the arrangement, Guyana would deduct monies from the fund to pay farmers and millers supplying Venezuela with rice.
Millions of dollars were supposed to be in the account but the new Government said that it was empty. Monies were withdrawn to pay for several projects including the $3.6B Hope Canal, and new Wartsila generators for the Guyana Power and Light and for other unauthorized uses.
GRDB should have known that the fund was being misused and therefore is responsible, Harmon stressed
Will no longer part of GRDB’s Board: Dharamkumar Seeraj
yesterday.
In addition to Jagnarine, Government also intends to no longer want Dharamkumar Seeraj, General Secretary of the Guyana Rice Producers Association (RPA), who was a member of the GRDB Board of Directors.
A candidate in the recent elections for the PPP/C, Seeraj was seen as a powerful player in the industry.
Harmon said that the government now has to find the monies from the public treasury to pay the millers and farmers for rice and paddy shipments.
It would be “difficult” to replenish the PetroCaribe Fund, he said. An inquiry into the spending as well as the operations of GRDB is currently ongoing.
Government is dead set against placing millions of payments into the hands of the current managers of the rice industry, especially in light of what has transpired.
The Minister explained that the monies will be paid to the farmers under another arrangement which is being handled by the Ministry of Finance.
According to Harmon, there is much at stake in the rice industry, currently the country’s biggest foreign currency earner. Government is obligated to explain how it is managing the industry, hence the shakeup.
Farmers have been complaining of low prices and no markets while millers have been accusing Government of late payments.
The situation would come against the backdrop of record-breaking productions in recent years with very few, new markets found overseas.
According to Harmon, decisions taken by the month-old Government are in the interest of what is credible, transparent and best for the industry.
The industry has been one that is being closely watched as angry rice farmers have been agitating for changes.
The state of the rice industry has been blamed as a major contributory factor for the loss of the PPP/C in the recent elections, especially in Region Two (Essequibo Coast) where the coalition made significant inroads.
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