Rice exports to Jamaica hit with 25% surcharge - key players lobby CARICOM By Gitanjali Singh Stabroek News May 31, 1999 Guyana's rice exports to Jamaica have once again hit a snag, this time with the Jamaican Customs applying a 25% surcharge on all shipments from Guyana pending confirmation of the origin of the rice. This has resulted in tonnes of rice lying in containers at the Kingston wharf in Jamaica, as Jamaican importers are unable to clear the containers and remit payment to Guyanese exporters, because they cannot raise the surcharge. Tonnes of rice are also piling up at wharves in Guyana awaiting shipment, while paddy earmarked to supply the Jamaican market, is now being stockpiled. Beni Sankar, chairman of the Caribbean Rice Association (CRA), has raised the issue with CARICOM and the Guyana Government, but there has been no satisfactory response to date. "CARICOM has called me to say there is not much they can do and I am not satisfied with the Guyana Government's response," Sankar told Stabroek News on Friday. On May 17, Sankar as CRA's chairman, wrote to CARICOM Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington, contending that the surcharge was not only restrictive for exporters, but was causing severe delays and costs to Jamaican buyers and Guyanese exporters. "...The prices on the Jamaican market are rapidly declining, which means further losses to all parties concerned, since the shipments were booked at certain price levels," Sankar told Carrington in his letter, which was copied to Charles Kennard, Chairman of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) and Clement Rohee and Michael Shree Chan, the ministers of foreign affairs and trade respectively. Sankar was seeking Carrington's intervention in having the requirement removed as each container for Jamaica is sealed by the Guyana Customs and each seal numbered and indicated on shipping documents. The difficulty has arisen because the container lines stop in Trinidad before the rice reaches Jamaica. However, Mahadeo Panchu, chief executive officer of Tropical Trading Enterprise, in a letter to Shree Chan and copied to President Janet Jagan, Rohee, Carrington and Kennard among others, said that unless the Jamaican authorities can prove that the Guyana customs seals were tampered with, the reason for the 25% surcharge is unfounded. Panchu said his company had 1,500 metric tonnes of white rice lying in containers on a wharf in Kingston, Jamaica and another 1,400 metric tonnes in containers here, waiting to be shipped to Jamaica. He said that since the implementation of the surcharge, the company has stopped buying rice from 24 millers locally and understands that there are over 2,000 metric tonnes of white rice in mills and warehouses of suppliers. "Our suppliers also have ...more than 300,000 bags of paddy, thereby guaranteeing our continuous weekly supplies to the Jamaican market until the next rice crop," Panchu stated. He contends that the surcharge is a breach of the CARICOM agreement and is to facilitate the sale of an initial 5,000 metric tonnes of low-quality US rice imported under the US PL-480 programme for Jamaica. He pointed to an agreement between the late president, Dr Cheddi Jagan and Jamaican Prime Minister, P J Patterson that once Guyana can fully satisfy the Jamaican market with white rice, this staple will no longer be a part of Jamaica's PL-480 programme. "We are requesting that this agreement be revisited and re-implemented and any discrimination against the entry of [Guyana's] white rice into the Jamaican market, as a CARICOM product, be withdrawn immediately...," Panchu stated. Rohee had written to his counterpart in Jamaica, Seymour Mullings, on May 18, notifying him of the issue and asking that he intervene and resolve it immediately. Efforts by Stabroek News to contact Shree Chan and Rohee on Friday were unsuccessful. A © page from: Guyana: Land of Six Peoples