The Guyana Rice Develop-ment Board (GRDB) is monitoring rice exports more rigidly with a view to ensuring that there is enough for the local market.
Asked yesterday if the GRDB was restricting exports, General Manager GRDB Jagnarine Singh told this newspaper that his office was asking millers to put rice on the local market. He said that they were being asked to put enough of the commodity to satisfy the requirements of the region in which the miller’s operation is located.
Singh insisted that because of these measures, there was no shortage of the product at this time. He added that though there was a chance that the price might drop, it might not go back to where it was some time ago ($280 per gallon). He said this was because the costs of inputs were still very high and cited fertiliser, which has seen 100 per cent price increase over three years.
He said that because of the high cost of inputs, farmers would continue to look for high prices for their paddy.
Some days ago, rice farmer and miller Beni Sankar of Kayman Sankar Investments had told this newspaper that the GRDB could have prevented the price of rice on the local market from skyrocketing, if better monitoring had been done. Sankar said the price of the commodity should have increased by about 25 per cent at the most. Rice cost $2,800 per bag – about $280 per gallon – at the beginning of 2007 and is now over $6,000, about $600 a gallon.
Speaking to Stabroek News yesterday, CEO-Production of Fairfield Rice Inc Dr Peter De Groot, confirmed that the GRDB has become more rigorous in its monitoring, requiring more time for the processing of shipping documentation.
De Groot said the last crop in the Region Five area where his company is based was very small. He is of the view that other areas of the country were not so severely affected.
He said that in the light of the present situation, his company has asked the GRDB to export its requirement for week four and five (of 2008) and set aside another week’s production for the local market. He said the company was waiting to hear from the GRDB as regards this request.
He mentioned that Guyana did not raise any objections to Jamaica’s request to import its supplies of rice from outside the region, since meeting those requirements would have been difficult for Guyana.
He said Guyana was able to meet its commitment to the Jamaica market up the end of December 2007.
De Groot said that since September, he has been checking the prices of rice on the world market. He found that 15% broken rice upped in price by around 25 per cent from US$365 per tonne to over US$400.
He said that the world’s holdover stock of rice is at the lowest it has been since the early 1980s.
De Groot is of the view that the local price hike has more to do with what is happening on the world market than any internal shortage. He pointed out that only about five per cent of the world’s rice is exported and therefore shortfall in production would have a major effect on that small percentage that is exported.
A number of countries, he said, have imposed restrictions or bans on the export of rice because of the situation – high rice prices and high oil prices. He said the GRDB should be monitoring and seeking to reduce exports. He said the force majeure clause written into the supply contracts allows Guyana a way out of its commitments in the face of difficulties.
