AGRICULTURE Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, on Thursday night, emphatically rejected the assertion that Guyana was being developed with “drugs money.”
He picked up on a comment, from within the Opposition benches in Parliament during the 2014 Budget debate, that development was not achieved by the sweat and blood of hard working Guyanese people.“Our people invest in their country not drug lords,” he maintained, adding: “The economy of Guyana is driven towards positive growth by these investors not the drug lords that some of our colleagues on the other side want to paint them all with the same brush.
“These are the hard, cold facts. When we speak loosely, we insult people like our rice farmers.”
QUOTE: “This is the story of the Guyana I see when I leave the hallowed halls of our Parliament. Not a broken country, with only dismal tales to tell. It is a country bravely moving upwards on a trajectory of better lives for all, gaining in economic and social standings in our Caribbean Region, proudly celebrating successes. But this is the country that is denied in this House. This is the country where people’s lives are misrepresented for narrow political gains.”
According to the Agriculture Minister, in 2013 alone, foreign direct investments (FDIs) were more than the entire post-independence years up to 1992.
Ramsammy said: “The real story of development is domestic investment, investment of our own people, people who live and work in this beautiful country…small scale farmers in our country are actually the largest investors in our development.
“Take, for instance, rice farmers. In 2013, the rice farmers of Guyana invested about $28B not in in-kind contributions, not in their investments in machines but in operational costs, in real money, directly for cultivation.
“This is money they invested in land preparations, in fertilisers and pesticides, in seed paddy, in water management in their fields, in harvesting, in transportation of their paddy etc. They invested a minimum of $28B in cultivating more than 400,000 acres of rice in 2013.
“Between 2010 and 2013, these same rice farmers invested $6B in tractors and harvesters and, at the rate they are going now, they will exceed $2B in 2014 in tractors and harvesters.”
The Agriculture Minister said rice millers also invested $10B to increase capacity in drying, storage and milling of paddy for the past four years.
“Many millers are working with the Energy Research Institute of India to replace the use of fossil fuel to reduce cost and to effect greater efficiency in their operations,” he reported.
“They are not drug lords or drug pushers. It is their hard earned cash that they invest,” he insisted.
Ramsammy charged that, when eight years of continued and uninterrupted growth is coupled with assertions that it is drug driven, the hard work, commitment, dreams and achievements of Guyanese people are diminished.
He said: “This is the story of the Guyana I see when I leave the hallowed halls of our Parliament. Not a broken country, with only dismal tales to tell. It is a country bravely moving upwards on a trajectory of better lives for all, gaining in economic and social standings in our Caribbean Region, proudly celebrating successes. But this is the country that is denied in this House. This is the country where people’s lives are misrepresented for narrow political gains.”
By Vanessa Narine
