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Chris Ram to meet GuySuCo CEO today on forensic audit
Local accountant, Christopher Ram, who has accepted an offer to audit the recently commissioned US$12.5M Enmore Packaging Plant, is expected to meet with officials of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) today to work out the details.
According to Paul Bhim, Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, he has received a request from Ram to have a meeting. This meeting is expected this afternoon to work out the terms of reference and other arrangements, Bhim told Kaieteur News yesterday.
The Enmore sugar packaging plant.
It will be recalled that late last month, Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, had invited Kaieteur News and Ram to conduct a forensic audit, following a article on sugar by the accountant in which questions were raised over the cost of the packaging plant.
According to Minister Persaud, Ram and Kaieteur News had the option of contacting GuySuCo to arrange for the audit.
He warned that the cost would not be borne by GuySuCo.
On May 25, Kaieteur News and Ram both accepted the challenge with the newspaper committing to paying for the audit to be conducted by the accountant.
The Minister had said that he stands by his offer. “I am not bluffing. Whenever Mr. Ram is ready, he can make contact with the Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo, Paul Bhim, and the audit will be accommodated,” the Minister said.
Managing Director of Kaieteur News, Glenn Lall, said that he is willing to put his personal money in the interest of transparency, accountability and decency in any public administration where public funds are involved.
Lall added that he hopes that a similar invitation would be forthcoming for the Amaila Falls road and hydro project.
The offer by Minister Persaud stemmed from a letter under the hand of Christopher Ram in the Stabroek News on May 17. Among other things the letter spoke of the cost of the recently commissioned Enmore packaging plant.
Following that letter, GuySuCo had issued a detailed statement stressing that the US$12.5M ($2.5B) is the total cost of Project Gold, an initiative which includes the upgrade of the Enmore factory and the supply and installation of packaging equipment and warehouse, among other things.
Ram, in that letter, said that Kenya’s largest sugar miller, Mumias Sugar Company (MSC), recently built at a cost of US$3M a new 11-machine, state-of-the-art packaging plant with a daily capacity of 700 tonnes of sugar.
The Enmore project was financed by the European Union under special measures to assist Guyana, following a 36 per cent price cut by GuySuCo’s biggest customer there.
The plant was built by Surendra Engineering Corporation, a Mumbai-based company that is building two turn-key refinery facilities in Sudan. Surendra says that it has partnered with UK’s Tate and Lyle, and Booker Tate.
In his letter today, Ram pointed out in the May 17 letter in the Stabroek News, he corrected President Jagdeo’s “exaggerated pronouncement of sugar’s contribution” to the country’s GDP as 16 per cent instead of the more realistic six per cent.
“The focus of my letter was to caution that the packaging plant, welcome though it is, could not be a silver bullet for the serious financial problems of the Corporation. In that connection I drew attention to the wave of packing plants taking place across the world and specifically referred to a 300,000 tonnes capacity plant by Mumias Sugar Company (MSC) with a daily capacity of 700 tonnes and a price tag of US$3M.”
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