Rice farmers stated that the Petrocaribe fund never worked for them, and called for a better system to be put in place in wake of its failure. Members of the Essequibo Paddy Farmers Association expressed the hope that government would step in and help the rice farmers. They asked for a special revolving fund to be set aside which was what the Petro Caribe should have been, so they could be paid on time. “The previous government was saying that the Petro-Caribe fund was a revolving fund, but I do not know how it is a revolving fund, when we the farmers are not benefiting out of it, but what we want, we want a special fund to be set aside in the bank, whereby farmers and likewise the millers can go and borrow, especially the millers, so that we can be paid in a timely manner and not have to wait six to eight months down the road to receive our payments,” they said.
On June 11, Minister of State Joseph Harmon had announced that the fund was empty and that US$15M was needed to pay rice farmers. The PetroCaribe Fund was set up as part of Guyana’s arrangement with Venezuela, to pay local famers supplying rice to the neighbouring country under a concessionary fuel supply agreement. Thus far the fund should have contained sums amounting to hundreds of millions of US dollars.
Speaking to the issue of collusion, the farmers observed that the GRDB was working for millers and shortchanging the farmers, on a number of issues including paddy prices, in terms of fertilizers and the grading of the paddy. “You have transactions going on between members of the board with some individual millers, whereby those on the board are having drawback from the millers.” They noted that millers purchase the paddy from farmers and then sell them to overseas markets and give the farmers a pittance.
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