By Patrick Jones
Caribbean Net News Belize Correspondent
Email: patrick@caribbeannetnews.com
BELIZE CITY, Belize: The government of Belize has given the green light for the importation of rice from Mexico and the United States.
Starting on Tuesday, June 10, the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation, (BMDC) will receive the first shipment of imported rice.
The first shipment will be of 44,000 pounds of the staple. According to the managing director of BMDC, Roque Mai, Belize will be importing 1.5 million pounds of rice this month, to offset a severe shortage currently being experienced.
The rice shortage comes in the wake of massive flooding following the passage of Tropical Storm Arthur, which wiped out rice crops in the northern part of the country.
Farmers in Blue Creek, Orange Walk, who supply the bulk of the rice consumed by the local market, report that 5 million pounds of paddy was destroyed last week.
Smaller rice farms in the south are cut off from the rest of the country, due to the washing away of a major bridge on the highway that links the south with the rest of the country by massive floods caused by Tropical Storm Arthur last weekend.
This week's decision to import rice from Sinaloa, Mexico, and the US was taken after the BMDC consulted with the Ministries of Agriculture and Economic Development and the office of Prime Minister Dean Barrow.
Following Tuesday's arrival of the first shipment of rice, Mai says two other container loads will be delivered to the BMDC depot in Belize City on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
Mai says the rice shortage should be stabilized by Friday. According to Carlos Moreno of Belize Food Supply, his organization usually supplies the country with 3,500 bags of rice weekly.
That's roughly 350,000 of an estimated 1.3 million pounds of rice consumed by Belizeans monthly. But Moreno says that because of the panic created by the shortage, stores have been buying more rice to add to their stocks, putting severed pressure on Belize Food Supply to find rice.
"We expect this week we will be supplying 400,000 pounds more which would ease the pressure at the retail end and I think by then we should have settled this situation and just continue running as normal as we would normally be doing on a weekly basis," Moreno told local radio Love FM on Monday morning.
Belize's sole rice mill is working around the clock to try and keep up with the demand for rice. Moreno says that the amount of rice in stock can suffice for the next three months and the new crop is already being planted.
However, concerns are still being raised about the price.
While Belize Food Supply sells the 100 pound bag for BZ$121 to their distributors, the retail prices in the stores vary across the country. Some merchants are still selling at a whopping BZ$1.60 per pound, despite a government imposed retail price of no more than BZ$1.31.
Mai says that BMDC is paying BZ$115 per one hundred pound sack of imported rice and no retail price has been announced yet; but the BMDC boss says that government and the Corporation are still working on a retail price for its customers.
In the meantime, Mai says that the retail price for rice should remain at $1.31. |
