THE current challenges facing the rice industry are not the doing of the current government, but were inherited from the past government, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo told the National Assembly last week.Speaking on a motion on the rice industry tabled by the opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic, The Prime Minister explained: “…the truth of the matter is that the former Minister of Agriculture, Dr (Leslie) Ramsammy, went to Caracas and was informed that Venezuela was no longer going to supply us fuel and will no longer receive our rice; and instead of returning to Guyana, he left for the United States, and the Head of the Presidential Secretariat announced that Dr. Ramsammy could no longer continue in office; that he was sick.”

The Prime Minister informed the House that the situation in which the rice industry finds itself is a direct effect of actions of the previous administration.

“The opposition, then government, owed the millers approximately US$15M, approximately Gy$3 billion, for the supply of rice, while the millers in turn owed rice farmers across the country some $6 billion for the supply of paddy,” the Prime Minister reminded.

The millers, Prime Minister Nagamootoo said, have developed a reputation of failing to pay rice farmers on time; and the previous government did not pay the millers, so they could not pay the farmers, resulting in an accumulation of $6 billion, which they are now unable to settle because of the outstanding amount owed.

“It is a result of the ripple effect of conning, as well as denying the farmers what was due to them,” the Prime Minister declared.

Dealing with the discontinuation of the PetroCaribe oil-for-rice agreement between Guyana and Venezuela, Prime Minister Nagamootoo said the issue is not so much the loss of the Venezuelan market, but what had happened while the agreement was in force.

He pointed to the mismanagement of the PetroCaribe funds, saying: “It was not that we were shipping rice to Venezuela alone; the money was coming here and it was placed in the PetroCaribe fund, and still the money never reached the farmers; so the farmers accumulated loans to the bank, because they were not being paid and they could not service the loans.”

The Prime Minister also pointed to mishandling of the European Union (EU) funds which were intended to benefit rice farmers. He quoted rice magnate Beni Sankar as saying, “This problem of millers owing the farmers would have been non-existent if the monies that were made available to Guyana — about $3 billion — by the EU for the rice industry was put in a revolving fund, as in Suriname, rather than in the Consolidated Fund.”

Responding to the opposition’s allegation of the government adopting a hands-off approach in dealing with the challenges faced by the rice industry, and their attempt to associate the current situation with the spate of suicides, the Prime Minister said, “I refer to an article published in the magazine ‘Lady’ issued in December 2015, and it says here, and I quote, ‘Guyana has been dubbed as the number one suicide country in the world as a result of the high per capita cases of suicides reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012.’ Who was in government in 2012?”

The almost immediate release of $800 Million for payments to rice farmers for rice shipped to the Venezuelan market, and the order to fix four not-working irrigation pumps on the Essequibo Coast are among the initiatives identified by Prime Minister Nagamootoo as efforts to assist rice farmers. (GINA)