Rice and CARICOM
Editorial
Stabroek News
May 26, 2003
In a press release on Friday, the Rice Producers' Association (RPA) expressed its gross dissatisfaction with CARICOM's implementation of several instruments intended to support the regional rice industry. These include the regional rice standard and a monitoring mechanism to gather data on internal production and consumption patterns. The rice standard - which Guyana had long sought - would establish the benchmark for the regional trade in the grain. Agreed by the CARICOM Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), the standard was to have been implemented between April and October last year. To date, according to the RPA, it has not been adopted in community countries.
COTED had also agreed that CARICOM countries would supply data to the CARICOM Secretariat on production and consumption so that there could be a more precise matching of supply and demand. Even though this was agreed in May last year, the RPA says there has been no significant development.
The lack of implementation of these agreements is not unsurprising. CARICOM meetings and the gathering of its various councils tend to be heavy on talk and light on execution. Over the years, the key players in the rice sector here have come to understand that the promotion of Guyana's rice industry over heavily subsidized imports from the north and elsewhere is not an issue that attracts the sympathy of CARICOM delegations. Hence, over the years, local producers have had to face filibustering from Trinidad on the question of parboiled rice and punctiliousness on the "colour" of Guyana's quality production. The convenient absence of information on needs or last-minute requests for waivers of the CET have paved the way for dubious imports by several countries into CARICOM while the suspicious omission of paddy from a list of ineligibles permitted imports of that item by Jamaica when Guyana could have been the premier supplier. PL-480 rice unloaded into Kingston has also been a longstanding sore point for Guyana.
This ambivalence across CARICOM in responding to the genuine concerns of an important regional industry as is the case with Guyana's rice is the reason why people here and across the Caribbean Sea tend to view the regional integration movement with a mixture of despair, disaffection and disinterest.
Rice remains a crucial industry in Guyana and is trying to rebound from serious challenges that include the debilitating debt that it took on over many years, vulnerable preferential trading arrangements and depressed global prices. It also suffered the collapse of the Other Countries and Territories (OCT) route to the European market and is dreading the likely mid-term review of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy which could further shrink its markets. To have to also confront within CARICOM an unwillingness to recognise the gravity of the problem and to lend a genuine helping hand to an industry under stress is a bit too much.
While the banana industry in the region suffered from the avarice of large American conglomerates it is within the reach of CARICOM to help secure certain of its key industries by virtue of the size of its internal market. With the accession of Haiti to the regional grouping, Guyana and the other main rice supplier in CARICOM, Suriname, could certainly be positioned to meet a large part of the region's needs as cost-efficiently as possible. As of now, heavily subsidized American grain and from other parts of the world is taking away jobs from the region and forcing farmers off their land.
CARICOM has an important role to play in settling this issue and it is left to be seen how COTED and meetings of the heads attempt to resolve this dilemma. But it is not only CARICOM that has to be scrutinized. The continuing problems with ensuring fair access to the region's rice markets for Guyana's producers signals the need for more strenuous lobbying by our local producers, more effective representation by our Ministry of Foreign Trade and greater emphasis on this issue by President Jagdeo at the highest fora of CARICOM. The peculiar split in responsibilities between the Guyana ministries of foreign trade and foreign affairs will also make it difficult for the cogent arguing of Guyana's case in the halls of CARICOM, the EU and at the World Trade Organisation.
The current marketing difficulties in CARICOM and further afield should also signal to local producers that the era of inefficient and poor quality producers having unlimited access to preferential markets is at an end. Restructuring of the rice industry will be painful and traumatic but is absolutely necessary if it is to thrive. Hopefully EU aid and support from the government here will help to ease the burden.
