AGRICULTURE Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy says he is currently concluding arrangements with Trinidad and Tobago for that country to import aromatic rice produced in Guyana.

In a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle at his Regent Road, Georgetown office, the minister said that the local market cannot consume all the aromatic rice produced in this year’s first crop.
This is the first crop in which the specialty rice was grown here on a large scale. For this reason, he said he is in discussions with Trinidad, which will most likely be Guyana’s first importer of the commodity.
Dr. Ramsammy and the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of State in the Food Production Ministry, Mr. Jairam Seemungal had discussions earlier this year when the Trinidadian minister visited Guyana and examined the possibilities of his country importing Guyana’s aromatic rice.
The unique species of rice was produced in the first instance in a small quantity with only one farmer planting approximately 60 acres of it.  However, approximately 25 farmers throughout Regions 2 to 6 produced the specialty rice for the first crop of 2013.
In a previous interview, Ramsammy had reported that the “Bengal Aromatic Rice”, marketed by Rambrich Enterprise, was doing well on the local market.
He noted that from the 60 acres of land cultivated last year, approximately 1,000 bags of aromatic rice were produced, and so far it has been in great demand in Guyana.
The Bengal Aromatic Rice, which was introduced on the local market last December, is a special species of rice, like the popular Basmati Rice of India, and is now being produced in Guyana and for the first time in the Caribbean.
When the rice was first launched, Dr Ramsammy had pointed out that it was developed after years of experimentation at the ministry’s rice research facility at Burma, West Coast Berbice.