Georgetown: Total paddy sales for this year is in the vicinity of over $42 billion, the Agriculture Ministry has said, although stressing that rice farmers are still owed billions despite Government’s interventions to help in the early payments.
This week, Government released another $1.5 billion to assist in paying off rice farmers. At the beginning of the week, Government intervened with about $600 million and Wednesday released from the PetroCaribe account advanced payments for another $1.5 billion, making the amounts so far for the second half of December $2.1 billion.
At the beginning of the week, farmers were owed about $3 billion and after payments of the latest advances which the Ministry hopes will be completed by next Monday, 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.
According to the Ministry, at present, the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) and the Rice Producers Association (RPA) are working with farmers to ensure that millers complete all payments before year-end.
“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 per cent payment to farmers within the Rice Factory Act timeline. 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 $39 billion, or greater than 93 per cent. While this is commendable, the millers must make an even greater effort to meet their obligations to farmers,” the Ministry said.
It added: “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 industry has now closed off its harvesting, with a final production of 633,000 tonnes to date. This is almost 100,000 tonnes greater than the 2013 production and more than 200,000 tonnes than the 2012 production.
High yield
The yield this year was about 5.4 tonnes of paddy per hectare or about 35 bags per acre. Harvesting was from 93,000 hectares. In terms of paddy, the country is close to achieving for the first time one million tonnes of paddy production. This was thought to be highly impossible for a country like Guyana.
“Export stands today at 490,000 tonnes with further shipments to be made in the next week before the end of the year and we are confident of reaching a historic milestone of 500,000 tonnes export for 2014. Guyana’s market for rice has expanded to several countries in Central America and we are returning to pre-2010 export of rice to Haiti,” the Ministry said.
Brazil and Columbia are also growing destinations for Guyana’s rice. Guyana continues to engage several African countries which have expressed interest in Guyana’s rice. Most of these countries are in West Africa and the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa delayed progress on realising these new markets.
In addition, several Middle Eastern countries have approached Guyana and these possibilities have been discussed.
“In the meanwhile, we are settling the 2015 contract with Venezuela. Export to Venezuela accounted for almost 70 per cent of Guyana’s rice production in 2010. Today, the export to Venezuela is still one of our most important export destinations, but this destination only accounts for about 30 per cent of Guyana’s rice production,” the Ministry said.
Guyana’s rice industry is also poised for expansion into value-added products.
Bulk export
While bulk export of rice continues to be the main export from the rice industry, in 2014, the largest amount of packaged rice was sold. Packaged rice export amounted to about 50,000 tonnes in 2014.
“In collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Commerce and IAST [Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology], rapid advances have been made in acquiring a rice cereal factory and we expect this to produce commercial quantity of rice cereal in 2015. At the same time, we expect the first major bio-energy plant replacing about 70 per cent of fossil fuel utilisation 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 is working to ensure at least three such bio-fuel substitution occur in 2015. The TERI Group is also working with us to establish a paddy husk pellet project to utilise paddy husk for generating energy off-site.”
In addition to Government’s enormous improvement of drainage and irrigation, increased production of high quality paddy seeds, expansion of research for new varieties and to fight pests and diseases, extension services, access to affordable fertilisers, for which the Government invests large sums of money, these investments continue to strengthen the rice industry and transforming it to a giant in the economic and social development of Guyana.
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