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GuySuCo set to meet first crop target
After three years of difficulties of dealing with the climate and such constraints, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) is set to meet its first crop target of 74,000 tonnes, the Ministry of Agriculture announced over the weekend.
According to Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, by this time next week, GuySuCo will be in a position to announce that it would have surpassed its first crop target. Almost three weeks of cultivation remain for five of the eight factories.
The remaining three factories – Albion, Blairmont and Rose Hall – should conclude their crop within the next week and a half. According to the Ministry, already these three have surpassed their first crop target.
GuySuCo after three years of poor production is set to surpass its first crop target
In the case of Albion, Ramsammy said that the target has been surpassed by more than 2000 tonnes. The estate had projected a production of 13,365 tonnes of sugar for this first crop, but already it has produced 15,451 and is expected to surpass 20,000 tonnes.
The production would be good news for the sugar industry which has been consistently falling short of production targets in recent years.
This was despite a massive $200M sunk in the flagship Skeldon factory project in East Berbice a few years ago. The factory has been failing to meet targets because of technical and other issues.
According to Ramsammy, it is very encouraging to see GuySuCo performing at a level of its potential.
“This is testimony to my faith in the industry, and also allows for the detractors of the industry to pause a little, because I have heard the explanation of bad management and so forth, and my question is how come when the weather is good, even in the last three years, GuySuCo performs at its potential,” he said.
”Indeed there is a group of people in Guyana who were convinced that GuySuCo would fail again and there are people who I believe were praying that GuySuCo would fail again, but I believe – the corporation, the managers and workers of GuySuCo, and we altogether – that given the right conditions the same manager, the same factories, the same equipment, the same workers would perform as they have done historically, producing sugar at high level and we have done so again,” he said.
The Agriculture Minister noted that since the climate seems to be a great issue affecting the production of sugar, what Guyana and the Caribbean need to do is to ensure collectively there is an answer as to how to deal with the changing weather pattern.
He noted that the $6B cash help from Government that was approved for GuySuCo this year will go towards some of this work, but much still needs to be done.
This is the first time in about six to ten crops that GuySuCo has been able to continue to the scheduled end of the crop, in spite of a late beginning because of weather.
Last year, the industry fell to less than the adjusted 190,000 tonnes. At the beginning of 2013, GuySuCo had set an ambitious target of 260,000 tonnes, but adjusted this a number of times.
This year, the target is 216,000 tonnes.
The Opposition, in approving the $6B cash help in the National Assembly, had urged Government to table a plan of how the industry will be revived.
Once the biggest foreign currency earner, GuySuCo fell to third behind gold and rice.
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