The Head of one of the country’s leading players on the international rice market has told Stabroek Business that the expansion of Guyana’s rice sales on the international market could come under serious threat unless the industry undergoes urgent expansion of lands for rice cultivation and modernization of other critical operational aspects of the country’s industry.
Chief Executive Officer of the Berbice-based Nand Persaud Group of Companies, Rajendra Persaud said last weekend in an exclusive interview with this newspaper that what, in the wake of the termination of the PetroCaribe rice deal with neighbouring Venezuela had turned into a desperate search for new overseas markets had now moved to the other extreme of available markets but insufficient rice to meet those needs.
His own company, he said, which, just last July sealed a rice export deal with Cuba had reached a point where the company had “stopped taking new orders and looking for new markets because we do not have the rice to sell.”