GEORGETOWN, Guyana, May 12, CMC –Guyana exported just over 139,000 tonnes of rice during the first four months of the year, valued at more than US$57 million, a senior official of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) has said.

GRDB manager, Nizam Hassan said that as of May 7, the rice industry has harvested 86 per cent of its 2018 production, equivalent to 75,137 hectares of the 87,538 hectares planted and is a significant increase in production from 310,748 tonnes earlier in the year to 448,926 tonnes.

“For the period January to April 2018, we exported 139,501 tonnes valued at US$57.7 million compared to 120,811 tonnes valued at US$47 million for the corresponding period of 2017.

“So, I’m talking about the first four months of 2018 compared with the first four months of 2017, in terms of the volume, that’s about 15 per cent more we’ve exported. The increases in the exports have primarily come of course from new markets that we’ve been exporting to,” Hassan said.

He said “what we have seen in the first crop, generally there has been improved productivity issues such as pests and disease were managed, farmers were being paid faster than previous crops, prices paid were improved from previous crops, as GUY $3000 (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) per bag of paddy.

“The first crop faired very well and we are very optimistic going ahead for the second crop. This kind of performance trend will just continue, we have seen this since the second crop of 2017,” Hassan said

Since last year, Guyana has been exporting rice to Mexico and according to figures released here, the Caribbean country shipped 113,525 tonnes of paddy in 2017.