Importer Jack Charles says he's determined to bring in rice from Guyana - and it seems the ministry of agriculture is determined to not grant him a permit. Charles says his rice will retail for 69 cents per pound - which is about fifty cents less than local rice currently sells for. But, the Ministry of Agriculture doesn't want him to get a permit because of the upheaval it will cause for rice local producers.
But that upheaval may be good news for consumers: Charles says that a conservative estimate is that Belizeans would save half a million dollars a month using the Guyanese rice. And that's because he accused local producers of gouging consumers - raising prices steeply over the last three to four years - for no good reason. As he put it in a release on Friday, the rice producers are making, quote, "unfair and unjust profits."
So Charles says Guyanese rice will be the market equalizer - and proved that it wouldn't be the first time that such rice has been imported into Belize. In fact last year, 3.1 million pounds of rice was imported at a cost of 1.6 million dollars by the Belize marketing board. This, we are told was to compensate for a local shortfall - and guess who sold it? The same rice producers who bought it wholesale from the Marketing Board! And while the rice was imported at a cost of 53 cents a pound - none of those savings benefited the consumer - because it was still wholesaled at 94 cents per pound, and by the time it hit shelves was still selling and one dollar and twenty cents a pound.
Charles says he intends to bring in six containers initially - which is about half a million pounds. He believes he can get it priced on store shelves at 69 cents a pound. Government is reluctant to grant a permit - but under the treaty of Chaguaramas - there's only so much they can do to stop an import from a Caricom country.
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