The Success Story They Didn’t Think We’d Read Twice

 The Success Story They Didn’t Think We’d Read Twice

Record Feedstock, Imported Chicken, and the Question of Who Actually Benefits

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

Copies of import documents issued to Royal Chicken for feedstock

The Ministry of Finance’s 2026 Midyear Report, released Monday, tells a clean story: 7,800 acres of soya bean and 1,316 acres of corn cultivated in the first half of the year; 3,450 tonnes of soya bean and 4,008 tonnes of corn produced — a combined 7,458 tonnes of feedstock the Government credits with delivering “a major boost to the livestock industry.” A drying and storage facility at Ebini, the first of its kind in the country, is offered as the physical proof: three silos at 3,000 tonnes each, an 80-tonne-per-hour drying tower, over 40 kilometres of new road into the Berbice River interior.

It is, on its face, a success story. It was written to be read once, as one.

WHAT THE DOCUMENTS SHOW

On January 26, 2026, the Guyana Customs & Excise Department’s Lethem Branch Office recorded a Single Administrative Document for 100 metric tons of crude, non-degummed soyabean oil, imported from North Link Brazil Ltda of Boa Vista, Roraima, consigned to Royal Chicken Inc. at Lot 60, Garden of Eden, East Bank Demerara. Customs value: GY$29,815,500.

Two weeks later, on February 9, 2026, the Guyana Revenue Authority approved a tax exemption for Royal Chicken Inc. covering 1,500 tons of soyabean meal, against Commercial Invoice No. 003/2026, from the same Brazilian exporter. The letter — addressed to General Manager Rasheed Baksh and signed for the Commissioner-General by Gavin Low; was copied to the Comptroller of Customs, Excise & Trade Operations, the Deputy Commissioner of Law Enforcement & Investigation, and the Auditor General.

Royal Chicken Inc. is not a bystander to Guyana’s domestic feedstock programme. It is a named member of the Tacama Gold Incorporated consortium — the same public-private structure, chaired by Bounty Farm’s David Fernandes, that received the same order of government infrastructure investment this newsroom  has tracked since 2023, built on the same justification now repeated in the Midyear Report: reducing Guyana’s roughly US$25-30 million annual poultry feed import bill.

This news desk  reported the contradiction in real time. “Subsidised Soya, Exported Feed, Imported Chicken,” published April 30, 2026, laid out what the Brazil shipments meant: a company sitting inside the domestic-production consortium was simultaneously importing the very input that consortium’s silos exist to supply.

Five months later, on September 7, this news desk  reported a second, related anomaly: the Guyana Marketing Corporation — a statutory body whose own mandate, by its own website, has been confined since 1985 to market facilitation, research, and export development for Guyanese producers, not buying and selling — was documented distributing imported Brazilian chicken to Guyanese consumers. The packaging carried no English label, in apparent conflict with the Food and Drug Regulations’ Regulation 18 and with the labelling standards cited in the U.S. International Trade Administration’s own Guyana market guidance. The imported product was reported selling below the price of the local chicken it was nominally meant to supplement. GMC’s involvement was never explained as anything other than an unspecified “temporary” intervention to “stabilize prices,” with no stated duration and no stated safeguard for local producers.

The Midyear Report, published a week and a half later, does not mention either finding. It reports the tonnage. It does not report who used it, who didn’t, why a consortium member was buying 1,600 tons of Brazilian soya product in the same window the domestic programme was supposedly ramping toward the harvest it now claims, or why the country’s own agricultural marketing corporation was simultaneously retailing the imported end product that programme exists to displace.

THE ARITHMETIC THE REPORT LEAVES OUT

Put the government’s own numbers next to each other:

— Domestic feedstock produced, H1 2026 (Ministry of Finance): 7,458 tonnes (3,450t soya + 4,008t corn)

— Feedstock imported by a consortium member, Jan–Feb 2026 alone (GRA/Customs): approximately 1,600 tons (1,500 tons soyabean meal + 100 metric tons soyabean oil)

— Chicken currently being imported (per this newsroom’s ongoing market reporting): 300,000 lbs weekly

— Imported chicken publicly documented moving through a state marketing agency (this newsroom , Sept. 7, 2026): unlabelled, Brazilian-sourced, priced below local product

The Government’s framing asks readers to accept that a record domestic harvest, a purpose-built storage-and-drying facility, and a consortium of established poultry producers have together boosted “the livestock industry”;

If the domestic programme is working as described, neither the feedstock import nor the GMC chicken distribution was necessary. If it is not working as described, the Midyear Report’s production figures are not being converted into the meat supply they are credited with supporting — and the state’s own marketing corporation has been quietly filling the gap with the exact imported product the programme was built to eliminate.

Either reading contradicts the report as published. Neither was addressed in it.

On August 11, 2026, the Department of Public Information reported Minister Zulfikar Mustapha meeting with the Private Sector Commission on a “poultry market stabilisation measure” — an acknowledgment, however indirect, that the poultry market required stabilising at all. That meeting came three months after this newsroom  had published the feedstock import documentation, four weeks before this publication  published the GMC findings, and five weeks before the Ministry of Finance would publish a harvest tonnage it now credits with resolving the problem.

WHO BENEFITED

The public investment in this programme is not in dispute: infrastructure at Ebini and Tacama Landing, over 40 kilometres of road, a drying and storage facility described as the first of its kind in Guyana, all funded and built to the same figure — $1.2 billion — that recurs across the Ministry’s agro-processing announcements. The stated beneficiary of that investment was always the same: Guyanese consumers, through lower feed costs and, eventually, lower meat prices.

The documentary record this newsroom  holds shows a different beneficiary in at least two instances — a consortium member permitted to import its raw material tax-exempt from Brazil, and a state marketing corporation caught retailing imported Brazilian chicken below the local price, while the government’s own report credits the domestic programme’s footprint with a record harvest. The chicken on the shelf did not get cheaper across the board. The 300,000 lbs arriving weekly did not stop.

And the institution mandated to build markets for Guyanese produce was, by its own conduct, building one for someone else’s.

The Ministry published tonnage. It did not publish where that tonnage went, who processed it, what it fed, why the consortium built to end feed imports was, by its own government’s paperwork, still running them in the same half-year the report now presents as vindication, or why GMC’s own retail operation was moving the imported product that same programme exists to make unnecessary.

This newsroom  is submitting formal queries to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Guyana Marketing Corporation, and Royal Chicken Inc. asking:

What became of the 7,458 tons credited to the first half of 2026; whether any of it reached Royal Chicken or another Tacama consortium member?

Why a tax exemption for Brazilian soya inputs was granted to a company positioned, on paper, to draw from a domestic supply the Government says it was simultaneously producing?

Under what authority, and for how long, GMC’s mandate has extended to the retail distribution of un-labelled imported chicken?

They published a success story assuming no one would check the receipts against it. The receipts — customs declarations, tax exemption letters, and a photograph of Portuguese packaging on a Guyanese shelf — say otherwise.

The 592 Guardian has published the underlying GRA exemption letter, Customs import declaration, and GMC imported-chicken findings referenced in this piece. Queries to the Ministry of Agriculture, GRA, GMC, and Royal Chicken Inc. were outstanding at time of publication; responses will be published in full when received.