Millers who supplied rice to the GRDB for shipment to Panama since early 2017 have not yet been paid, an amount in excess of $2B. This translates to farmers not being paid. My sympathy is 100% with the farmers. The Minister of Agriculture is, as usual, AWOL, missing in action, hiding behind spurious excuses such as he is unaware of what the issue is. He seems to be oblivious of any agriculture matter and only appears to be present if there is something good to talk about. Every time there is a problem, he is absent, not available and, often, plead no-knowledge of the problem. For example, when questioned about the financial status of the Sugar Workers Pension Fund last week, he pleaded ignorance. The Panama Rice non-payment problem dates back to early 2017, yet the Minister refuses to address it, a clear example of misconduct in office.
APNU+AFC introduced a new criminal offense – misconduct in office. But they appear to have limited its utilization to charge former PPP ministers and officials. The truth is that clear misconduct in office is evident everyday in this APNU+AFC term. We can identify misconduct in office every single day since May 2015. I was going to highlight this week the misconduct in office of Minister Patterson in the management of the new proposed Demerara River Bridge, a project that was already articulated in the 2013 and 2014 national budgets. By now the Demerara River Bridge should have been nearing completion. But the Minister has royally bungled the project. After spending more than $100M on a feasibility study and tendering for another floating bridge, he is now informing the nation that he and his government have changed their mind and will now pursue another expensive study for a high, non-floating bridge. I will discuss the Demerara River Bridge misconduct in office later and, instead, highlight the Agriculture Minister’s misconduct in office.
The Panama rice deal was one that I personally worked on. In early 2013, I visited Panama and, with help from IICA, met with officials of the incoming government in Panama. I informed the then Guyana President, Donald Ramotar, of the possibility of a government-to-government rice deal between Guyana and Panama. Fortunately, an OAS meeting was being held in early 2014 in Colombia and President Ramotar was attending. It would be the first international meeting for the new Panamanian President. As Guyana’s Minister of Agriculture, I met with President Ramotar before he left for the Colombia meeting and requested that he arranged to meet with the Panamanian President to discuss the possibility. He and the Panamanian President agreed that such South-South cooperation is essential. The Panamanian President preferred a government-to-government arrangement because he believed his government could supply rice at cost in Panamanian supermarkets.
I was dispatched to Panama immediately after President Ramotar returned to Guyana and the Panamanian President was gracious and generous with his time. We met and he instructed his Minister of Agriculture to immediately arrange a meeting between my technical team and his and to formalize a contract for 50,000 tons of rice per year, preferably in packaged form. The price was lower than the price from Venezuela, but higher than any other market Guyana was dealing with. Within weeks of that meeting, we shipped the first 5,000 tons of rice to Panama. This arrangement had to overcome the difficulties inherent in existing arrangements between the US and Panama, with the US supplying almost 100% of rice in Panama’s supermarkets. The GRDB was put in charge of the arrangements with Panama. The arrangements were simple – GRDB will contract Guyanese millers to supply the rice in accordance with standards established by Panama and GRDB will pay the millers for the rice they supplied. This meant, essentially, that the Guyana Government will assume payment to the millers through GRDB and will replace the funds upon payment from Panama.
This is a concrete example of how the PPP government facilitated the rice industry, often providing payments to farmers, until payments were made by importing countries and buyers. APNU+AFC has abrogated this responsibility. Under its reckless policies, it has reduced the GRDB to a toothless poodle. The independence and effectiveness of the GRDB is under assault from this government. It is why the present CEO of the GRDB has to hide from the media and the millers because his minister is AWOL. His Minister is guilty of misconduct in office, a misconduct that is placing an onerous burden on the rice farmers. This misconduct is especially egregious because the Rice Industry is helping to keep the economy from negative growth.
