Main opposition APNU yesterday said that the government’s announcement on Christmas Eve that it was advancing $2.1B to millers so they could meet obligations to rice farmers is intended to mislead the public and divert attention from the hardships faced by growers.

In a statement, APNU said that the announcement by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy that the Government is advancing $2.1B to millers “is deliberately intended to mislead the Guyanese public and divert attention from the existing pressures that these farmers are facing on a daily basis.”

It called on Ramsammy to explain the following:

If the farmers have delivered 600,000 tons of rice to the millers, valued at $42.0B, then the paddy price must have been $4,400 per bag. However, APNU alleged that the reality is that farmers are being paid discriminatory prices, ranging from $3,250 to friends and between $2,800 -$1,900 per bag to others.

APNU said that rice farmers know that their paddy price was cut in half from $6000 to $3000 since the PPP Administration took control of paddy delivery under the lucrative PetroCaribe Venezuela deal which it said was originally initiated by Dr. Turhane Doerga.

APNU charged that 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”.

APNU further said that in the 2007-2008 boom, rice farmers invested massively in the industry because the paddy price was reaching the $7,000 per bag level. However, APNU said that 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?”

APNU asked what Ramsammy meant when he referred to the delivery of packaged rice and where the packaging is being undertaken

APNU also queried when the first gasification/energy plant was built and by which company.

It also questioned why the private sector is being prevented from developing and marketing specialty rice cereals.

On Wednesday, Ramsammy’s ministry said that Government had released $2.1 billion to pay rice farmers who have oftentimes complained of being paid late by millers with rice production this year reaching a record 633,000 tons.

The statement from the Ministry said that at the beginning of the week, about $600 million was released by the government and it on Wednesday released $1.5 billion from the PetroCaribe account to assist in paying off rice farmers making the advanced payments so far for the second half of December, $2.1 billion.

Venezuela has been by far the major market for Guyana’s rice and paddy accounting for around 70 per cent of total exports in 2010. This year, however it is about 30 percent since new markets have been acquired, the ministry statement said.

According to the ministry, at the beginning of the week, farmers were owed about $3 billion and after payments of the latest advances, the amount owed to rice farmers will be less than $1 billion. “These are not loans, but payments made earlier so that millers pay off farmers,” the statement said.

The ministry disclosed that presently, the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) and the Guyana Rice Producers Association (RPA) are working with farmers to ensure that millers complete all payments before the end of the year. “We urge the millers to work through their bankers to make all outstanding payments to farmers. While the Ministry acknowledges that a valiant effort was made by millers, we still believe that they must ensure 100% payment to farmers within the Rice Factory Act timeline,” the statement said.

According to the ministry, the accumulated sales of paddy by rice farmers to millers amounted to greater than $42 billion for the two crops in 2014. “At this time, millers would have paid off more than $39B, or greater than 93%. While this is commendable, the millers must make an even greater effort to meet their obligations to farmers. Increasingly, the GRDB is making more rigid requirements on millers and we are cautioning millers that we will ensure that they pay interest on their debt to farmers in 2015,” the ministry asserted.

According to the ministry, Guyana’s rice industry is also poised for expansion into value-added products.

“While bulk export of rice continues to be the main export from the rice industry, 2014 evidenced the largest amount of packaged rice sold. Packaged rice export amounted to about 50,000 tons in 2014. In collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Commerce and IAST, rapid advances have been made in acquiring a rice cereal factory and we expect this to produce commercial quantity of rice cereal in 2015,” the ministry said.

“At the same time, we expect the first major bio-energy plant replacing about 70% of fossil fuel utilization in the operation of a rice factory in Essequibo to be in place by the first quarter of 2015. The GRDB and the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the TERI Group of India is working to ensure at least three such bio-fuel substitutions occur in 2015. The TERI Group is also working with us to establish a paddy husk pellet project to utilize paddy husk for generating energy off-site,” it added.