The collapse of the Guyana economy

May 22, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
The Opposition parties and the press have fallen asleep at the switch. It is their duty to alert Guyanese to impending disaster. Such seems to be the case if Mr. Tony Vieira’s comment on May 14th, 2009 is to be believed.
Mr. Vieira argues that GuySuCo is having a great difficulty in remaining viable and that the Skeldon Sugar Factory will become a white elephant.
His prediction about the sugar industry is gloomy, perhaps too gloomy. If sugar is as unviable as Mr. Vieira thinks, the Guyana economy will not be able to reproduce itself and standards of living will fall.
The first fundamental in relation to reproducing the economy is to maintain the infrastructure.
Instead of running around the world, dabbling in esoteric forest trades, it would pay the President, several times over, to secure deals with dredging experts like Boscalis, to dredge the main rivers of Guyana to deepen channels and to throw up soil on to the land to raise the land level and improve soil fertility.
This would partially overcome soil deficiencies that Mr. Vieira identifies. In the late 1960s, Guyana produced 3.6 to 3.7 tons of sugar per acre as compared with a little better today than 2.0 tons of sugar per acre.
The 1960s figure was not as high the 4.0 tons plus that was achieved in St. Kitts and in Cuba but it was not insignificant. Those yields are once again possible.
Achieving high yields was a function of efficient drainage and irrigation. Some of the drainage capability was achieved at the expense of the villages which were drowned when the reservoirs overflowed.
But with better local government management in the villages and greater skill in the preservation of the reservoirs, top level performances in drainage would reduce the wetness that Mr. Vieira identifies as a comparative disadvantage. After all, we have been growing sugar for over 300 years and an inability to improve in yields is an indication of extreme backwardness.
Our trouble resides in three areas. The first is that President Jagdeo relies on the expansion of sugar which, in my view, is viable, but precariously so. The second is in the undue haste pursued by the PPP to Indianise the management of the sugar estates and the drainage and irrigation infrastructure.
The third was the incredibly stupid privatisation of drainage canals and trenches in the homestead areas.
The strategy to expand sugar was associated with the decision to reduce the importance of bauxite. The PPP seemed unaware of the potential for a symbiotic relation between sugar and bauxite.
The surplus from bauxite could have financed the expansion of sugar. But the PPP thought it necessary to weaken bauxite and undermine a PNC stronghold. Mr. Sam Hinds was appointed bauxite executioner.
The expansion of sugar was pursued with a hasty Indianisation of the management of both sugar and the drainage and irrigation infrastructure.
The Indianisation process was begun by Dr. Jagan himself, but with the enthusiastic support of aggressive Freedom House Turks.
The racist venom spewed by this process embittered Africans, many of whom had supported the PPP. It is therefore sheer dishonesty when they use surrogates in Canada and elsewhere to protest against writers like Dr. Kean Gibson that explain Indian racism in terms of culture and philosophy.
From this behaviour, one gets the impression that the only people with human feelings that can be hurt by racial injustice are East Indians.
Africans can be brutalised in all sorts of ways and are deemed racist if they dare to protest.
The consequence of the rapid Indianisation has been the spread and intensification of inefficiency by the vicious excluding of Africans. Every aspect of top level decision making is regarded as a secret.
Minister Asgar Ally told the IDB and the World Bank to withhold GuySuCo information from me even though I was Guyana’s representative at the IDB.
The IDB and the World Bank should have indicated that the request was untenable but the PNC had made similar requests before. Party politics and race inter- mixed to diminish management capability.
Guyana continues to suffer from the consequence of this diminution.
Sugar can be saved if it modifies its plantation mode and if drainage and irrigation are drastically improved.
These are massive tasks requiring the participation of knowledgeable Guyanese including Professor Clive Thomas, Mr. Harold Davis, Mr. Tony Vieira and others who know the industry well. If this approach is not pursued, Skeldon will indeed become a white elephant as Mr. Vieira predicts.
Clarence F. Ellis

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The collapse of the Guyana economy

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