Seeraj accuses gov’t of overstating growth in rice production

General Secretary of the Rice Producers’ Association (RPA) Dharamkumar Seeraj is accusing the APNU+AFC coalition government of using “skillful statistics” to inflate the rice production for this year.

According to him, the government is “comparing this year with last year because last year was not a good year. They should compare this year with 2014 or 2015.”

He pointed out that the low prices in the latter half of 2015 contributed to less being cultivated for the first crop in 2016.

The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has said that figures from the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) indicate that farmers harvested a total of 89,290 hectares in this year’s first crop,