Former Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy yesterday said that a $100m disbursement from the rice board in 2014 which is being investigated by the government comprised a reimbursable payment to rice farmers who had been left in the lurch by Quality Rice Co-op.
In recent days Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma has said that an ongoing audit of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) had detected a $100m loan to the Rice Producers Association (RPA) in the name of its General Secretary Dharamkumar Seeraj which is yet to be repaid. He said that the loan agreement was also countersigned by Ramsammy and then GRDB General Manager Jagnarine Singh.
In a statement yesterday when contacted by Stabroek News, Ramsammy said that the Ministry of Agriculture never directly or through the GRDB provided a loan of any amount to the RPA while he was Minister of Agriculture.
“The fact is that we did provide a sum of $100M to pay farmers from Region 3 who were not paid for the paddy sold in the first crop of 2014. The payments were made after farmers directly and through the RPA made representation for relief after Quality Rice Co-op failed to pay the farmers for paddy which they procured from the farmers.
“Quality Co-op procured an amount of paddy totaling more than $220M. Some of the farmers were shareholders of the Co-op, but others were rice farmers from Region 3 who sold their paddy to the Co-op. We decided we will pay those farmers who were not members of the Co-op. The RPA was engaged by the GRDB and the Ministry of Agriculture to facilitate the payment, since we wanted to ensure that Quality Co-op did not use the resources to pay the members themselves”, Ramsammy said.
He said that Quality Co-op had stated that they had contracted a West Demerara rice mill to process the paddy to meet standards for export to Venezuela. Quality Rice Co-op, Ramsammy said, contended that the miller had failed to process the paddy. The result was that Quality Rice Co-op could not export to Venezuela and this resulted in it not being in a position to pay the farmers for paddy procured.
Ramsammy said that Quality Rice Co-op subsequently approached the court to adjudicate against the West Demerara miller. This matter is still in court.
“We knew at the time that the legal matter would occupy the court’s attention for a lengthy period of time. We considered it unfair for the non-members of the Co-op to wait until such time as the court matter is dispensed with. We felt that the members had to face some of the hardships created by the situation. It is for this reason that we did not cover the total cost of paddy procured by Quality Rice Co-op. The paddy secured from the members themselves was not covered through the relief provided by the Government”, Ramsammy stated.
He said that the arrangement was that when Quality Rice Co-op concluded the legal matter and resolved the dispute it would repay the $100M to the GRDB.
“This is an example of the intervention we made to support rice farmers and the rice industry. It is a concrete example of the support the PPP government provided to the industry. For the APNU+AFC Government to now try and use this matter as an example of illegal actions that the forensic audit has uncovered is absolutely dishonest”, Ramsammy declared.
He added: “The truth is that APNU+AFC is clutching at straws. The forensic audit at the GRDB, like those from other entities, is not resulting in any kind of criminal activities which they had hoped to discover. Now they are using well-known facts in a wicked misrepresentation to create an impression of wrong doing”. Ramsammy said that as Minister of Agriculture he was sympathetic to the rice farmers.
“It is true that I encouraged the GRDB to provide the relief for those farmers. I did make a case for government intervention. The matter was reported to the board and this was never done in secret. It was a public matter that was articulated publicly and the relief provided was one that was publicly discussed and implemented.
“I today on reflection would do it all over again, given the circumstances. I make no apologies for having supported the rice farmers given … those circumstances of the time. I stand by my leadership on this matter and I wish APNU+AFC will similarly act to help farmers. In fact, they need to go further than we did at that time. Were I still Minister of Agriculture I would have been foot-to-foot with farmers to ensure the present neglect never materialized”, Ramsammy asserted.
Minister Sharma confirmed yesterday that the forensic audit at GRDB is ongoing with the discovery of the $100M transaction being further scrutinized.
He told Stabroek News that the transaction “was suspicious because it didn’t indicate any purpose.”
Sharma stated that there are more revelations to come as an employee of the GRDB was fired and an investigation launched into possible fraud at the Burma rice facility which involves the same dismissed employee utilising GRDB staff to grow rice. He did not venture into further details noting that right now an investigation had to determine the extent of any fraud. In the expression of interest for those famers and millers vying to become Venezuelan market suppliers for the spring crop of 2014, Quality Rice Co-op was assigned an amount of 4,000 tonnes.
Earlier in 2014, the then PPP/C government provided in excess of $300 million to millers so they could pay rice farmers who were still owed from the previous crop. In July, $400 million was provided to Essequibo miller Nazeemul Hakh, as an advance so payments could be made to rice farmers.
The media was never told the breakdown of the bailout funds for the rice industry nor was a comprehensive amount for 2014 ever revealed. In December 2014, the PPP/C government released $2.1B to pay rice farmers.
Stabroek News has attempted to make contact with the current head of the GRDB, Nizam Hassan, Singh and Seeraj for comment to no avail.
