Company’s rice now on Haiti, Dominica market
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the local rice ‘giant’, Nand Persaud & Company, Mohindra Persaud, has told the Stabroek Business that the company is still to receive payments from Cuba for rice supplied to the Caribbean island, some of it in excess of five years ago and that the company may well have to give up on the likelihood of ever receiving those payments. Speaking with the Stabroek Business newspaper earlier this week, Persaud said that the company’s own efforts, those of the Government of Guyana and those that specifically involved the country’s President, Irfaan Ali, had all failed to unlock the Havana’s coffers.
The rice magnate hinted to the Stabroek Business that the company may well have to forego the payment altogether since there had been no movement on the matter over the years that it has existed.
While Persaud appeared much more inclined to address the current fortunes of the local rice industry than Cuba’s debt he told the Stabroek Business that it was his understanding that Cuba’s payment challenges did not stop at Guyana but also extended to other suppliers and that he had learnt that the problem was linked to the wider economic challenges facing the country. Persaud himself had traveled to Cuba last November though he told the Stabroek Business that his various meetings with Cuban officials there and a flurry of correspondence on the matter had yielded no meaningful results.
Persaud, however, does not appear to be unduly daunted by the Cuba situation and seemed upbeat on the prospects for the current rice crop’s likely yield arising, from, among other things, “the high quality of paddy” and the more recent breakthroughs that the company had secured on the international market.
Those apart, he sought to provide assurances that the level of rice availability provided clear indications that a shortage of rice on the local market, in the period ahead, was unlikely. Seemingly brimming with confidence about the future of the rice sector Persaud told the Stabroek Business that in recent weeks the company had been supplying rice to both its regional and international markets asserting that they have all received the quantities which they had requested. The local market, too, he asserted, had been adequately supplied.
He disclosed that the company had received a surge of orders for parboiled rice and that the company has been moving to meet the demands of those markets. Persaud also disclosed that after an absence of two decades the company had returned to the market in CARICOM member country, Haiti, and that recently it had taken on board another, Dominica.
