A $100M loan in July, 2014 from the rice board to farmers which has not been repaid will put pressure on the Rice Producers Association (RPA) which collected the money and raise questions about the way the former PPP/C government conducted business.
Junior Finance Minister Jaipaul Sharma on Wednesday stated that he believes new supporting documents claiming to provide a breakdown of the $100M loan from the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) to the RPA were fabricated and does little to support former Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy’s explanations of how the money was spent.
Sharma showed Stabroek News a spreadsheet which breaks down not only the alleged $100M loan but also an additional payout to rice farmers by the GRDB to the tune of $42M.
He said that the new revelations cause even more doubt as to where the money went and how it was spent. “There is nothing to support that this document was in existence at the time this agreement was signed”, he stated.
The minister said that Ramsammy’s explanations which appeared in the Stabroek News on Wednesday were “inconsistent in many ways” and simply “not the truth,” mainly because from the inception Ramsammy was denying a loan was ever agreed upon even though there is documentation to that effect.” Showing Stabroek News a copy of the Loan Agreement, Sharma stated, “so here [former] minister saying he never … directly or through the GRDB provided a loan of any amount. Look the evidence is here…this is the agreement he clearly sign here as minister.”
The issuing of the loan by the GRDB to the RPA would raise questions about what authority it had to engage in this transaction and what role the former PPP/C government and Ramsammy played in influencing it. The RPA would also now face pressure to repay the loan which was due since October last year.
The RPA had sought the loan after the farmers in question became entangled in a dispute with a miller and the matter ended up in court.
Ramsammy in a statement to Stabroek News on Tuesday 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 document shown to Stabroek News however described the transaction as a loan. Ramsammy ventured that “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.”
Sharma argued on Wednesday that a loan agreement was in fact signed by Ramsammy, then General Manager of the GRDB, Jagnarine Singh and General Secretary of the RPA, Dharamkumar Seeraj. He showed Stabroek News the agreement along with the Promissory Note that was signed by Seeraj stating that the $100M would be paid back to the GRDB on or before October 31, 2014, nearly a year ago.
Sharma stated that the loan agreement and the promissory note were the only documentation that was found and it was only a few days ago after being asked multiple times that the lead accountant of the GRDB presented information that attempted to explain where the money went. He noted that the new documentation showed that the GRDB paid an additional $42M to farmers which overlapped with the RPA loan. The minister also stated that while this new information was conveniently found there is still no trace of any information that would support any dealing with the Quality Rice Co-op
The junior finance minister stated that it was nearly impossible to say who was a member of the co-op and who wasn’t since an audit in 2013 revealed that the co-op never kept a membership list.
Sharma said that it was only after Ramsammy’s disclosure in the Stabroek News that the co-op’s name surfaced in relation to the $100M loan. There is “nothing here about any Quality Rice Co-op, nothing about that where it was to be paid, and who farmers had to be paid,” Sharma told Stabroek News.
The minister noted that Seeraj would still have to account for the entire sum. The public had no knowledge of the GRDB loan until the disclosure of the audit finding.
Seeraj spoke with Stabroek News on Wednesday and noted that the funds paid out needed to be tied to the money provided for fertilisers. Documentation by the GRDB accountant revealed that a total of $6.7M was provided for a fertiliser subsidy, the combined total of the two sums equals $98.9M.
The head of the RPA said that the association had provided the GRDB with the list of farmers who were paid using the $100M. He said that the association also kept copies of their own that they would share.
He noted that at the time farmers were not paid and litigation was pending between the co-op and the Ruimzigt Rice Mill which was hired by the former to mill the paddy for export to Venezuela. Seeraj said that he wanted to get farmers paid quickly because once the issue moved to the courts farmers would be left in the lurch.
He noted that the co-op was given a preliminary 4,000-tonne quota that was to be sold under the PetroCaribe Venezuelan Rice Agreement and at the time a tonne of paddy’s world market price was about US$500. Ramsammy had noted that Quality Co-op procured an amount of paddy totalling more than $220M.
Seeraj told Stabroek News that the RPA was just used to facilitate the transfer of money to farmers but that the co-op and its members which include the proprietor of the rice mill, Turhane Doerga were well aware that they would be responsible for paying back the funds.
Speaking to Stabroek News on Wednesday, Doerga said that the paddy was of poor quality and as a result so was the rice and it therefore was not shipped. He confirmed he was a member of the co-op and was not paid any money. However Doerga did tell Stabroek News that he was made aware that farmers were paid although he was not sure where the money came from.
