Guyanese rice producers are reeling from a slump in global rice prices due to an “all time high” production of the grain, prompting the Guyana government to explore ways of cushioning the impact, President Irfaan Ali said Tuesday.
He told a news conference at the Office of the President that the government’s plans include the construction of storage facilities and value-added rice products. He said already finance minister Dr Ashni Singh and agriculture minister Zulfikar Mustapha met millers on Wednesday and would meet again later this week before engaging farmers across the rice-growing regions “for us to come up with ideas to ease the impact of the falling global prices, glut on the market and the record level of stockpile so that the burden can be minimised on our farmers.”
Dr Ali said major rice producing-exporting nations such as India, Vietnam and Brazil have both record levels of production and stockpiles, “They have to get stockpiles on to the market, causing a glut and the consequence of that, we’ve seen low prices, we’ve seen falling prices,” he said.
The weighted average of global white rice exports ended August at US$415 per tonne, down US$14 per tonne from a month ago and US$228 from one year ago, he said.
With the International Rice Statistics Observatory (OSIRIZ), an affiliate of the French agricultural research center CIRAD, that the trend of falling prices due to oversupply is projected to continue at least until early 2026, the Guyana government is poised to provide assistance.
Dr Ali said more than 209,000 acres have been cultivated for Guyana’s second crop at an average yield of 40 bags per acre with a projected total of 8.3 million bags.
Despite the glut and related price slump globally, the President ruled out Guyana reducing its rice production, projected at 804,000 metric tonnes for 2025. Even as Guyana was trying to maximise its trade agreements to find new markets for the grain, he said rice growing regions were being equipped with storage facilities. “I don’t think we can scale back. I believe that we have to add value and that is why we have to build out an agro-ecosystem, a business system…We have to invest in storage because when you want to play in the big game and increase production, you have to have storage capacity and also market forces are there,” he said.
In the past, the Guyana government had provided GY$2 billion in price support to farmers, providing them $4,000 per bag, GY$3.6 billion in fertiliser, flood relief and seed paddy, crop insurance for which 69.4 percent of farmers have already registered, removed the value added tax (VAT) and duties on machinery, equipment, agro-chemicals, fertilisers, pesticides, and the removal of the Guyana Rice Development Board’s zero commission. “We have exhausted many of the tools to assist farmers and millers,” he said.
The President said 10 weather stations are expected in Guyana by mid-October to help farmers better predict weather patterns.
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