WRITING A PRESCRIPTION WITHOUT A PROPER DIAGNOSIS

Jun 18, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The President has thrown down the gauntlet to the sugar unions, and to the many critics who feel that simply changing the Board of Directors is the panacea to the woes of the sugar company.
He has indicated that he is open to any ideas as to how to turn the fortunes of the company around. In so doing he has effectively challenged the critics to move beyond their criticisms and instead to come up with solutions to the problems of the industry.
There are two propensities in Guyana. The first is to criticize without offering solutions. The second is that when one does not have the answers resort is found in calls for individuals to be removed, as if this has ever solved anything.
There are many critics but few solutions. By declaring a crisis in the sugar industry and calling for ideas to turn the industry around, he effectively throws the ball into the courts of the critics and challenges them to rise to the occasion.
In recent times, the sugar industry has been over-diagnosed. Each week, there is some letter in the newspaper expounding on what has gone wrong and who needs to be replaced. The difficulty with most of these analyses is that they have not emerged from a study of the sugar industry; they have not been validated and they have not been tested to determine their validity.
Much of the analyses do not have an empirical or informed basis. Take for example the ridiculous question as to how the corporation could have shown a loss when with less production they had shown a profit. That analysis seems to have overlooked the fact that export prices have been slashed by one-third since that period when production was lower than what it was last year.
The presentation of these facts and analyses about the corporation’s performance and financial health will lead to a more informed discussion about the state of the industry. The President therefore needs to ensure that there is an informed basis for any ideas that will emerge. The best way for this to happen is to have an expert panel assembled to undertake a forensic study of the sugar corporation, to examine the pitfalls of the sugar corporation and to determine the best way forward. This study can then form the basis for an informed discussion on the future of the industry.
Ideas such as cooperatives, workers participation in management and a change in the Board are not going to be helpful unless there is a study to determine the causes that led to the decline in production and the failures of Skeldon. Thus, instead of a call for ideas there should be a commitment to have an expert study done.
This study will be costly but it will be costlier if it is not done. The sugar industry is too big to fail. It is also too big to fork out into cooperatives or to the sugar workers as was suggested for some of the plantations in West Demerara. There is a sunken investment on all estates; there are sunken investments by workers and their families in areas that surround these estates.
These investments cannot be picked up and moved. The population on the coast who depend on the sugar industry for a livelihood cannot simply pick up and relocate or even for that matter move easily into other forms of production. That requires an investment which will exceed ten Skeldon estates.
There is need for a national response to the problems of sugar. The president is having a major summit with the leaders of big business. He should do the same for sugar and he should invite all stakeholders and have a thematic approach to the industry as is being done with the conference being organized for the private sector.
But before that special conference on the sugar industry takes place, it is necessary for those who have a stake in the industry to have an informed view about just what is the state of the industry. Without this it makes no sense doing anything. It would be like administering medicine without knowing the nature of the illness.

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