$2.1B advance payment to Rice Farmers is PPP propaganda – APNU

[www.inewsguyana.com] – The main opposition – A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) believes that the advanced $2.1 billion payment to rice farmers by the ruling People’s Progressive Party government is “another good example of PPP misleading propaganda.”

The APNU in a press statement noted that the announcement by Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy is deliberately intended to mislead the Guyanese public and divert attention from the existing pressures that farmers are facing on a daily basis.

The APNU wants Dr Ramsammy to explain the following:

1. If the farmers have delivered 600,000 tons of rice to the millers, valued at G$42.0Bn, then the paddy price must have been G$4,400 per bag. However, the reality is that farmers are being paid discriminatory prices, ranging from G$3,250 to friends and between G$2,800 -$1,900 per bag to others;

2. Rice farmers know that their paddy price was cut in halve from G$6000 to G$3000 since the PPP Administration took control of Paddy delivery under the very lucrative Venezuela deal originally initiated by Dr. Turhane Doerga;

3. The very lucrative prices are being received from the Venezuelan deal while low paddy prices are being paid to the farmers to enable the PPP Administration and its cronies to reap super profits on the backs of the rice farmers who are being progressively impoverished;

4. In the 2007-2008 boom, rice farmers massively invested in the industry because the paddy price was reaching the G$7,000 per bag level. However, the Government-to-Government arrangement with the Venezuelans has enabled the PPP Administration to finally succeed in its objective to reduce the price paid to the rice farmers while benefiting the PPP cronies through discriminatory prices. How is this benefitting the suffering independent rice farmers?

5. What he means when he refers to the delivery of packaged rice and where the packaging is being undertaken;

6. When the first gasification/energy plant was built and by which company;

7. Why the private sector is being prevented from developing and marketing specialty rice cereals?