GROWTH and expansion are inimical to the sustenance of any business venture, and Nand Persaud & Company Investments is taking it by leaps and bounds. Rice milling is the primary business of this group of companies, with a small measure of rice farming.  However, in the last decade, the whole face of the company changed as they’ve  zoomed in on the international export market in a big way.
More than 90 per cent of the white and parboiled rice milled at Nand Persaud is exported to the Caribbean, North America and increasingly to markets in Europe and Africa.  Trinidad remains the largest buyer of bulk and packaged parboiled rice while Jamaica is the largest market overall.  “The cost for rice has risen from three years ago (US$450 per ton) to about US$840 for parboiled and US$640 for white rice,” General Manager, Mohindra Persaud said, adding that it continues to go up as the industry becomes more mechanized and more rice is available to expand their operations as well as their markets.
“The whole industry is going through a sort of revolution that began some five years ago and I predict that in another five years it will be almost completely mechanized,” he stated.  NPIC saw a 13 per cent increase in paddy intake in the second half of 2011 which could be due to farmers reclaiming old fields, cultivating new ones and mechanizing which has shortened the entire process between cultivation and harvest.
When asked about the history of relations between the company and rice growers, Mohindra stated that his company enjoys very cordial relationships with private farmers especially because of the unique payment arrangement with a local commercial bank.  He explained that the farmers are usually paid by the bank just one day after delivering their paddy to the mill.  Unlike most other rice mills, the farmers who sell to Nand Persaud do not have to wait until the milled rice is sold to receive payment.
Nand Persaud began preparation for the expected upsurge in rice yields years ago acquiring new drying and storage facilities, parboiling plant, a colour sorting machine that extracts discoloured grains, and three packaging machines producing 40 tons of packaged products per day.  Not only do they package their own high quality Karibee and Crown brands, NP is also contracted to package the Supa, Naisa and Eve brands from Trinidadian and Barbadian millers even though both countries import NP’s rice in bulk and in packages.
CARICOM markets are the “most comfortable markets for us,” said Mohindra, because of the Common External Tariff (CET).  Otherwise they sell ‘flat-footed’ in direct competition with Brazil, Argentina and even Suriname whose rice is cheaper.  NPIC is yet to benefit from the Partial Scope Trade Agreements that Guyana had signed with Brazil and the Dominican Republic which are structured for reduced or nil tariffs on certain products.
Nand Persaud has successfully and consistently penetrated international markets on its own but Mohindra agreed that with easier access to international funding and being able to secure places at foreign trade fairs would precipitate their plant and product expansion plans.
Nevertheless, the company is recognized locally as the most bullish on international market penetration, winning the GMSA’s President’s award for Exportation in 2011.  The Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association, one of the leading Business Support Organisations (BSO) in Guyana, is preparing to engage the Nand Persaud management and ensure the company benefits from the international funding and other programmes the Association has created access to.

EXPANSION THROUGH BACKWARD AND FORWARD INTEGRATION
Rice milling, packaging and exporting is not the extent of this Group’s operations.  There is an importation arm responsible for sourcing and marketing locally spare parts for factories, trucks, tractors, combines and other agricultural machinery, and fertilizers.  Their forward production services also include a Trucking Service for hire and a Bag Factory producing rice and fertilizer bags, plastic garbage bags and shopping bags.
Their efforts at backward integration include a (paddy) Seed Treatment factory with a capacity of 600 bags per day that provides farmers with planting materials.

EXPORTING RICE AND SERVICES
The second major company in the Group is Nand Persaud International Communications (NPIC) Inc., an information technology services provider that is also anchored in the international marketplace.   As early as 2002, brother Rajindra Persaud, an IT specialist, recognized the benefits of further enhancing the company’s presence and image overseas so he ventured into International Communications.  The subsidiary company, NPIC Outsourcing was established as a Business Process Organization (BPO) with an international Call Centre for online marketing.
Mainly North American clientele utilize their Facilities Management services that include Procurement and Supply Chain Management, writing and editing business documents, transcription and Word Processing.  NPIC is also established as an outsource partner to Canadian and American companies/agencies for Payroll and Accounting services, data storage, and online marketing.
Rajindra Persaud indicated that it is not easy for a small online service to go it alone in the wide world of technological communications.  Their major clientele, immense corporations and business chains spread across the globe, are more comfortable entrusting their confidential marketing data to large experienced and accredited marketers.  So NPIC joined an existing telephone marketing network and now successfully operates a thriving Call Centre based at Tain, Corentyne.  A branch centre was opened recently at Diamond, EBD.
He revealed that the consensus among his peers in the outer world is that Guyanese are very well suited to this business mainly because the local accent is relatively neutral and more readily understood anywhere in the world.  Our language structure, he said, is similar to that of the USA where the major customers are located, and Guyana functions in the same time zone.  Rajindra added that NPIC’s service costs are very competitive because labour costs in Guyana are  relatively low even in comparison with other CARICOM countries.

SKILL INAVAILABILITY
Throughout the group skill availability continues to be their Achilles Heel.  Nand Persaud is the largest single employer in the Ancient County but they are forced to expend large sums for on-the-job training of the secondary school graduates they employ.  This is the highest level of qualification (CXC) readily available to the company.
The management holds strongly to the view that Berbician youths who attend the technical institutes and University of Guyana in Georgetown and Berbice migrate immediately after acquiring their certificates.  “It is indeed strange that you would hardly find three university or TI graduates working on the Corentyne,” the Persaud brothers lamented, contending that the structures of the courses offered by these institutions are often outdated and unsuited to the needs of local industry.  “We need to figure out why the LLB graduates could apply their knowledge in Guyana while the Engineering, IT, Business Management and Natural Sciences Bachelors degree holders cannot,” they both said, calling for a full scale revamp of the tertiary curricula in Guyana.
The Agriculture sector is growing fast with mechanization.  There is an immediate need for mechanical and agricultural engineers to remain in Guyana to help sustain the sector by lending their services to existing companies and by establishing their own enterprises to provide new downstream support services.
It was not by accident that the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) has put skill development at the top of its agenda for 2012.  The President, Clinton Williams, in his 2011 report at the recent Awards Presentation ceremony, called on entrepreneurs to invest in human resource development and create their own skill pools.  He exhorted business owners to begin the process by identifying their specific skill needs then liaising with the GMSA to refine a proactive skill development programme that will satisfy those needs.  Simultaneously, the association has planned to engage the Education Ministry with the same objective of re-drafting vocational and university level curricula that adequately prepare students for work in Guyana’s industries.
One expectation is that the flight of trained Guyanese skills would decrease.  The obvious outcome would be quicker economic development as job opportunities are created.