The Governor of the Bank of Guyana, Lawrence Williams, issued a press release yesterday in response to an article by Guyana Times captioned ‘MRL gets approval to borrow about $300M to pay debts.’

The article, which appeared on page two of yesterday’s edition of the daily, said that the Guyana Government, through the Ministry of Finance, waived the Single Borrowers’ Limit to allow Mahaicony Rice Mills to borrow just over $300 million to help pay its debts to rice farmers.
The article went on to say that the waiver was requested by Demerara Bank under the Financial Institutions Act.

“[The] Bank of Guyana is the only legal authority which could grant a waiver of the statutory lending limits for licensed financial institutions as stipulated at section 14(1) of the Financial Institutions Act 1995,” the Bank of Guyana said.

According to the Governor of the Central Bank, no request was made by Demerara Bank Limited for such a waiver “since the additional extension of credit to the Mahaicony Rice Mills Limited would not have resulted in the bank breaching the statutory lending limit to an individual borrower.”