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The high sugar cost

Dec 04, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
It is Mollycoddling! This has to do with the labour intensive nature of growing this 40-ton of cane per acre crop. And whilst it may be true that at that at some time in the past labour costs may have been 65 per cent, the difference is that the world sugar growers had not yet mechanized at that time to the extent they have today, thereby bringing down labour costs drastically.
Also the TIMeS, as usual, does not seem to want to understand that what was relevant 50 years ago is not relevant today; today this cost of labour per tonne is completely unacceptable on the world stage, after everyone has mechanized their industries, making the TIMeS observations spurious, mischievous and ridiculous.
Heavy mechanisation is what we are competing with today and our situation must be put into that context. We are competing unsuccessfully or else GuySuCo would not be approaching Parliament today for an additional $4 billion to bail the corporation out of the economical mess which it finds itself in today.
Only the TIMeS would find the argument of growing our sugar uneconomically today and subsidizing it from the national purse, acceptable, since they would not know what it means to compete fairly, and their sister company GPC for example can call any price for their products.
For example selling $600 injections for $8000 to the Guyana Public Hospital as described in the Tuesday June  19, 2012 KN! The fact remains that in view of this large wage bill Jagdeo, a clearly poorly trained economist, has sought to expand the Guyana sugar industry instead of contracting it, as every other sensible nation in the Caribbean and Africa did, with disastrous results today.
Even if the Skeldon factory had worked well it would have been a disaster to expand sugar in this country since mechanization of the Guyana industry may very well be impossible.
This high labour cost today is making our industry uneconomical on the world stage today and has become a drain on the country’s purse and that is the bottom line!
When there was no mechanization worldwide, and everyone whom we were competing with were using hand labour we were not making massive losses in the industry since the price of sugar was very high. In addition to this high labour cost we are not getting value for money, since the quality of work is very poor, from cane cutting to planting and everything in between contributing to low/no yields. It is in the 2013 2017 GuySuCo development plan.
Tony Vieira

 

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