In a bid to recoup the $1 billion owed to rice millers by the Panamanian government, Attorney General Anil Nandlall said, Guyana is preparing to file legal action before the International Chamber of Arbitration in France.
“Our government now is forced to file proceedings at the International Chamber of Arbitration in France to recover this debt,” Nandlall said as he sought to reassure the rice millers of the government’s commitment to resolving the issue.
The Minister of Legal Affairs made the disclosure on his weekly broadcast programme “Issues in the News” that was streamed live on Facebook.
Slamming the opposition for entering into a bad deal and leaving rice farmers in limbo, he said money will have to be expended to retain international lawyers to prosecute and defend their claims.
Farmers, he said, had delivered their rice to the rice board as instructed by the government of the day which had “boasted that they secured a new market for rice,” and delivered the rice on credit without receiving any payment.
Investigations have revealed payments of $1,184,198,400 owed by the Panamanian government.
Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha had said that if the APNU+AFC government had followed through and pressed for payments, rice millers could have been paid already.
In 2018, the governments of Guyana and Panama renewed their agreement for the supply of rice to the lucrative Panamanian market for 2019.
The value of that contract was US$5.2 million and saw the supply of 200,000 quintals (equivalent to 9,075 tonnes) of white rice being shipped. In September 2018, 33 containers of parboiled rice, instead of white rice, were sent to Panama. The shipment was flagged by the Panamanian authorities and returned to Guyana.
In 2014, Guyana had sealed a deal with Panama for the supply of 5,000 tonnes of rice per month. The signing of the 2014 contract to supply rice to Panama in a government-to-government arrangement was to ensure that Guyana’s rice market could expand.
