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300,000 tonnes target set this year

Jan 11, 2011 News

… Sugar price hits world market high

As the sugar industry gets ready to commence operations after a two-week ‘premature’ closure, officials say that a 300,000-tonne target has been set for the year.
The Ministry of Agriculture also insisted yesterday that government is making numerous interventions in the industry and pointed to a recent $2B sale of cane lands along East Bank Demerara for house lots as one of examples.
Answering questions yesterday at a press conference, Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, when pressed about a recent promise of President Bharrat Jagdeo to personally intervene in the industry, which is facing a crisis cash crunch, said that Government has been meeting with stakeholders in an attempt to bolster workers’ attendance which last year was at dismal low point.
“The fact that the Central Housing and Planning Authority, Ministry of Housing, has been able to purchase from GuySuCo $2B worth of land from the East Bank development belt has been one of the interventions.”
The Minister noted that engagements by the President and other government officials including the Agriculture Ministry are designed to overcome the many challenges facing the sugar industry.
“…Not only with finances but with the type of turnout that will allow management and the Board (GuySuCo) to be assiduous and focus on other critical issues.”
This year, the sugar industry is facing harsher realities in the European market, and at home in Guyana, social and economic changes which are all impacting heavily on production.
With sugar prices touching a high on world markets yesterday, Persaud said that the reality is that Guyana simply does not have enough sugar to supply its markets.
And the problem is not sugar, but finding ways to move the sugar cane from the fields to the factory. This was a reality last year as over 400,000 tonnes of cane were left in the field because of poor attendance.
The engagements by the President and Government agencies with stakeholders, hopefully, will change the situation with the players ‘buying in”, Minister Persaud said.
Regarding the packaging plant at Enmore which is set to begin production within a few months, the official whose portfolios include the sugar industry, said that for the industry to be “healthy”, between 315,000 and 320,000 tonnes would have to be produced annually.
However, the attention will have to be on packaged sugar which fetches a premium price over bulk quantities. The former is not being produced in any significant quantities at the moment.
GuySuCo last year suffered one of the worst years in two decades with production falling to its lowest of 220,000 tonnes, way below what the industry needs to operate a profit.
This was despite one of best crops in recent years that could have allowed the Corporation to meet a 270,000 tonne production level at the end of the year.
On top of this, a far from desirable performance at the new billion-dollar Skeldon factory and mounting debts to the tune of $7B have all added to the woes of the industry which has been one of the country’s biggest earners.
However, the biggest challenge remained an elusive strategy to get workers to return to harvesting.

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