Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud says that a “recommended fixed minimum price” which farmers should be paid for paddy will be sewn into the recently sealed US$38M Venezuela deal.
At a press conference last week, Persaud also announc-ed that the Ministry of Agri-culture is publicly inviting more players into the Vene-zuelan market. These new suppliers, he said, will also benefit from the new pricing condition to be added to the contract which will see Guyana supplying Venezuela with 20,000 tonnes of white rice and 50,000 tonnes of paddy commencing next month. This move, Persaud further said, responding to questions, is not an effort by the government to control the market. Rather it seeks to see that there is a fixed minimum price which millers or second buyers must pay farmers. The aim is to ensure that farmers will be making a profit.
Details of a supplier’s contract, Persaud explained, are dealt with by the Guyana Rice Development Board. It is known what the millers are being paid, the minister noted, and it has been observed that buyers and sellers have been colluding to manipulate prices. He said these instances of collusion are being investigated.
There has been no mention of what this recommended fixed minimum price will be or if it will be approved and added to the conditions of the contract. However, Persaud seemed confident that the condition will be included in the contract before the supply starts in October.
This is the second rice and paddy deal to be inked with Venezuela. It was finalized at the end of August after Guyana completed the first deal. However, there has been some controversy about the payment scheme. The Vene-zuela deal has been described as bartering since it’s our rice and their oil under the PetroCaribe arrangement.
Funds from the PetroCaribe account are used to pay local farmers and millers who supply rice and paddy under the multimillion US-dollar deal, the Agricul-ture Minister earlier explain-ed. Guyana, he had said, obtains oil from Venezuela via the PetroCaribe arrangement, a deal signed by several Caricom countries in June 2005, and it is then sold to the public.
Proceeds from the oil sales are held in the PetroCaribe account, and the money in this account is used to make payments to Venezuela based on the oil supply agreement.
“It therefore means that instead of repaying Venezuela directly for their oil through the PetroCaribe account, we are instead using this money to pay rice farmers/millers and then discounting this value from the value owed to Venezuela for oil,” a statement recently issued by the Ministry of Agriculture quoted Persaud as saying.
