SeaRice Caribbean (Guyana) Limited has taken 50% ownership of the local operations of Mahaicony Rice Mills Ltd and will commence payments of the $53M owed to farmers from today, the company said yesterday.
Payments to farmers will begin at No. 70 Village, Corentyne from today and continue at Paradise and Vilvoorden, Essequibo Coast on Thursday. SeaRice Carib-bean is a partner company of John Fernandes Ltd.
SeaRice will also be taking half ownership of the buying centre at No 70 Village on the Corentyne, the mill at Black Bush Polder, the buying centre at Paradise and the mill at Vilvoorden from this rice crop.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SeaRice Caribbean Douglas Chappels said that it has decided with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) to settle in full the outstanding debts that were owed to the Guyana Financial Service (GFS) by Mahaicony Rice Ltd as part of the agreement to take over the mills.
The company had owed the sum of $495M to the GFS, Chappels said. He also noted that SeaRice will not be taking over the operations of the Mahaicony Rice Ltd facility that is located at Branch Road, Mahaicony.
The Ministry of Agricul-ture said in a release that SeaRice will be the new owners of the Mahaicony Rice Mills Ltd facilities in regions 2 and 6 after payment of all debts to farmers and the outstanding balance to the bank.
The ministry also said that the new owners will pay farmers the debts that were owed by the previous company since 2010. In 2010, farmers were owed more than $450M, when government stepped in to pay them.
The Mahaicony Rice Mills Ltd had promised to pay back the farmers within a three month period but this was not done and the government moved to the courts but SeaRice stepped in and concluded the agreement, the release added.
Over the years, the Mahaicony Rice Mills Limited had had chronic problems with payments to rice farmers for paddy supplied.
