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Gov’t. approaches IICA for assistance to recover $1.9B Panama owes rice millers
Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha
Kaieteur News – The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) has been invited to assist Guyana in obtaining from Panama, $1.9B it owes to Guyanese rice millers. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha last Friday.
The Minister stated that hopefully, he and Panama’s Minister of Agriculture can have a meeting soon and the payment can be made shortly following that meeting.
However, in late November last year, Panama had indicated that it would be unable to make the payment until the end of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This was after a letter asking them to honour its obligations was dispatched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hugh Todd to the Panamanian government.
In light of this, the Government of Guyana is still consistent in its call for the repayment. In fact, Minister Mustapha has been tending to the issue since taking office in August, but every effort to recover the money from Panama has been unfruitful.
The country had even committed to clearing the debt when President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali intervened and said Guyana would be repaid with interest.
Panama’s debt comes from contracts signed in 2018 and 2019 for rice shipments. The rice was shipped by the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) but only a partial payment of US$550,000 was made for the 2018 contract while none was made for the 2019 contract.
The partial payment from the 2018 contract was used to pay rice millers in 2018. Kaieteur News understands that the GRDB had to use its own funds to pay rice millers afterwards resulting in it having a liability of $4.7 million. It was also previously highlighted by this newspaper that the Panamanian government’s market offers a higher price than other markets; however, payments are sometimes delayed due to government processes.
Despite its outstanding debt, the country has expressed that it would like to revive the rice deal with Guyana. Minister Mustapha has since stated that he is awaiting the meeting which is being arranged by the IICA.
He believes that if the previous administration had shown more interest, the issue would not have existed but Kaieteur News understands that the former regime was not responsible for the billion-dollar debt.
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