Five years after the signing of the historic PetroCaribe ‘rice for oil’ deal between Guyana and Venezuela the euphoria in the sector that had resulted has been replaced with a more sober posture among stakeholders.
Not that the PetroCaribe deal is not still in place, but whereas at the start of the agreement in 2009, Venezuela absorbed around 65 per cent of Guyana’s total rice crop, exports to that country have now dipped to 32 per cent. Not because the volume of the country’s rice exports to Venezuela has decreased, but because Guyana’s rice production has grown steadily from 4.9 metric tonnes per acre four to five years ago to 5.2 metric tonnes per acre this year.
The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) is doing its best both to assert its own role in ensuring that outstanding sums owed to farmers by
