THE Government of Guyana last Wednesday released another $1.5B to assist in paying off rice farmers. At the beginning of last week, Government intervened with about $600M and subsequently released from the Petro Caribe account advanced payments for another $1.5B – a total of $2.1B in support for rice farmers.

Farmers, as at the start of last week, were owed about $3B and through Government support, most farmers are expected to be paid in full, leaving a debt of only $1B.
The accumulated sales of paddy by rice farmers to millers amounted to more than $42B for the two crops in 2014 and at the time the monies were released, millers would have paid off more than $39B, more than 93 per cent of the sums owed.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, these sums released are not loans, but payments made earlier so that millers may pay off farmers.

CRITICISMS
The main Opposition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) on Sunday came out with a statement criticising the Government for this move.
“The announcement by the Minister of Agriculture that the Government is advancing $2.1 B to millers to make early payments to cash starved rice farmers is deliberately intended to mislead the Guyanese public and divert attention from the existing pressures that these farmers are facing on a daily basis,” APNU said.
On that basis, the main Opposition called for an explanation of several issues, including:
1. If the farmers have delivered 600,000 tons of rice to the millers, valued at $42.0B, then the paddy price must have been G$4,400 per bag. However, the reality is that farmers are being paid discriminatory prices, ranging from G$3,250 to friends and between G$2,800 – $1,900 per bag to others;
2. Rice farmers know that their paddy price was cut in half from G$6,000 to G$3,000 since the PPP Administration took control of Paddy delivery under the very lucrative Venezuela deal originally initiated by Dr. Turhane Doerga;

“APNU has exposed itself as being bereft of any idea on how to sustain and develop the rice industry. Every time they open their mouths to speak about the rice industry they remind people why they destroyed the rice industry before 1992.” – Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

3. The very lucrative prices are being received from the Venezuelan deal while low paddy prices are being paid to the farmers to enable the PPP Administration and its cronies to reap super profits on the backs of the rice farmers who are being progressively impoverished;
4. In the 2007 – 2008 boom, rice farmers massively invested in the industry because the paddy price was reaching the G$7,000 per bag level. However, the Government-to-Government arrangement with the Venezuelans has enabled the PPP Administration to finally succeed in its objective to reduce the price paid to the rice farmers while benefiting the PPP cronies through discriminatory prices. How is this benefitting the suffering independent rice farmers?
5. What does he mean when he refers to the delivery of packaged rice and where the packaging is being undertaken;
6. When the first gasification/energy plant was built and by which company; and
7. Why the private sector is being prevented from developing and marketing specialty rice cereals?

“In their myopic approach to development, APNU absolutely missed the point.” – Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

APNU’S IGNORANCE EXPOSED
The Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, has since responded strongly to the main Opposition, slamming the party for its ignorance of the rice industry’s operations.
“APNU has exposed itself as being bereft of any idea on how to sustain and develop the rice industry. Every time they open their mouths to speak about the rice industry they remind people why they destroyed the rice industry before 1992.
“…APNU (PNC) has no moral option to speak on an industry that it crippled in its time in Government. APNU’s leading member, the PNC, caused the collapse of the industry, the abandonment of rice land and pauperized the farmers.
“Under the PNC (People’s National Congress), we had to get Food for the Poor to bring in rice to feed our people. Today, it seeks to misinform farmers and the Guyanese people. But clearly they are still out of their depth when it comes to the rice industry. Their advisors clearly have led them up the creek and they have been exposed as being totally ignorant of the industry.”

VOODOO MATHEMATICS
Dr. Ramsammy, in response to APNU’s questioning of the prices paid to farmers, concluded that some “voodoo” mathematics was the basis for the party’s pronouncements.
He said, “APNU disputed the Ministry’s assertion that farmers sold above $42B in paddy sales in 2014. They used the production figure of above 600,000 tons of rice to calculate paddy sales and come up with an average price per bag that is based on voodoo mathematics.
“The truth is that while the rice production was slightly more than 634,000 tons, paddy production was greater than 972,000 tons or more than 15M bags of paddy.”
The Agriculture Minster added that had the average price for a bag of paddy been $4,400, as APNU claimed it should have been for an income of above $40B, the actual income would have been more than $64B.
“This is why they ought to stay out of the industry. They have no knowledge about the industry and they simply play politics with the lives of rice farmers,” he said.

“The rice industry must not be a political football to play with the lives of people.” – Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

APNU MISINFORMED
Dr. Ramsammy highlighted too that, as it relates to APNU’s second question, the Guyana-Venezuela deal is a bilateral cooperation programme that was entirely worked out between Presidents Bharrat Jagdeo and Hugo Chavez.
He said, “Mr. T. Doerga continues to misinform APNU, but cannot misinform the rice farmers. Venezuela was importing rice for decades, but Guyana never sold any meaningful amount of rice and paddy to Venezuela before the Jagdeo-Chavez agreement and Petro Caribe arrangements.
“APNU exposed themselves when they mentioned Mr. Doerga. They gave Mr. Doerga a golden spoon in 1989/90 when they handed over all the government-owned mills to him. Where are these mills today? They should explain why almost 200 rice farmers who sold paddy to Quality Rice Coop were not paid. Government intervened through the GRDB (Guyana Rice Development Board). But this means that someone owes the Government more than $200M which the Government made available to the farmers of Region 3.”

PRICING ISSUES
Relative to the third and fourth questions about prices, the Agriculture Minister pointed out that in 2008 and 2009, paddy prices were influenced by the global food shortages.
“Prices on the world market sky-rocketed. We have little to do with the rising price then and we have nothing to do with the fall in price today. Pricing is a pure market phenomenon,” he said.
Dr. Ramsammy added that, “In 2010, the price of paddy was almost totally driven by the Venezuela deal. At that time, export to Venezuela accounted for almost 70 per cent of total production in Guyana.
“In 2014, export to Venezuela only accounts for about 30 per cent of total production. This means that the average price is now dictated by export to other destinations, and while Guyana has been able to maintain favourable prices at these other destinations, the price is significantly lower than to the Venezuelan destination.”

PACKAGED RICE
APNU’s fifth question relates to the Minister’s reference to the delivery of packaged rice and where the packaging is being undertaken, and Dr. Ramsammy explained that all the rice sold to Panama is in the form of packaged rice.
He said, “In addition, small amounts of packaged rice have been sold to other countries in the Caribbean, Europe and North America. The fact that they dispute that packaged rice is produced in Guyana is indicative of how little they know of the industry. Several facilities around Guyana already produce packaged rice for the local market and for export.
“Guyana has expanded the rice market to many other countries. Our almost total dependency on Venezuela has been reduced, and should the Venezuelan market not be available at any future time, Guyana will be able to absorb the rice being sold to Venezuela in the other markets. Sensible management of the industry has created a much safer industry than the one which depended on a single market destination.”

GASIFICATION
Relative to the sixth question on the gasification/energy plant in Guyana, Dr. Ramsammy stated that as part of the facilitation to improve efficiency and yield, and to reduce cost of production overall in the industry, experts from the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) have been working with millers to reduce electricity cost.
He said, “Through this facilitation, proposals for installing gasification technology in rice factories have been made. At least one miller has already invested in equipment and the gasification equipment will be installed in that rice factory in the first quarter of 2015.
“We have already identified that the miller is from the Essequibo Coast and that he has invested his own resources, outside of the technical support which is available to all millers.”
The minister added that the selection of the first mill to benefit from the TERI facilitation was entirely up to the private sector.
“TERI was made available and is still available to all millers. The first installation is being done at a mill where the owner came forward first with his investment. The second one is awaiting the next miller to express interest in investing in this cost-saving exercise,” he said.
He made it clear that the Government of Guyana has no interest in deciding which would be the next mill. “Our position is that all mills should invest in gasification technology for cleaner production of rice,” Dr. Ramsammy said.

RICE CEREALS
The Agriculture Minister, in response to APNU’s last question, rejected the party’s assertion that the private sector is being prevented from developing and marketing specialty rice cereals.
He said, “APNU claims that the PPP/C Government is preventing the private sector from engaging in the production of rice cereal. The PPP/C Government has been facilitating the rice industry which is totally private sector.
“Paddy production and rice milling are totally private sector. The Government cultivates no rice lands, other than those at the research centre which is used for seed paddy production and research. Part of the facilitation of the industry has been to promote value added.”
He was emphatic and stressed that the private sector was and remains free to develop any aspect of value-added rice products.
“We would welcome the private sector becoming engaged in rice cereal production or in any other value-added rice products. “The production research was done at Government cost, as part of our facilitation. “The Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Tourism and Commerce and the IAST collaborated with technical support from Trent University in Canada to establish the production capacity for rice cereal,” Dr. Ramsammy said.
He added, “The private sector is welcome to invest in this new component of the rice industry. As a Government, we decided to fast-track the investment in the rice cereal production in Essequibo to add another market for the rice farmers of that Region.”
Reports are that once this factory is operational, with professional staff, rice farmers can come together in a cooperative to own the new business. This project, in fact, facilitates the private sector to establish another SME (Small Manufacturing Enterprise) with Government’s facilitation.
“In their myopic approach to development, APNU absolutely missed the point,” the Minister said.
He noted that the Government of Guyana has provided support during every crop to ensure payments are made to farmers and will continue to do so.
“The rice industry must not be a political football to play with the lives of people. APNU clearly is playing dangerous politics with people’s lives. I reject APNU’s propaganda to create confusion in the industry,” Dr. Ramsammy stressed.