Dr. Raj Singh did not underperform during PPP/C administration – Rohee

Jun 09, 2015 News

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…but evidence points to track record of failure

By Jarryl Bryan
General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C), Clement Rohee, has condemned the sacking of former Guysuco Chief Executive Officer Dr. Raj Singh.

He contended that Singh was dismissed on the grounds of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘party affiliations’.
Rohee also denied that Dr. Singh, who appeared as a PPP/C candidate in the recently concluded General Elections, and that his performance had anything to do with GuySuCo’s current fiscal troubles.
GuySuCo’s troubles forced the newly minted Granger administration to approve a cash bailout of the sugar corporation.
“When you say not performing, I assume that it is based on what the new government is saying. Dr. Singh never said that he was not performing. It is the new administration that came in and began the propaganda against Dr. Singh and the Board, about non performance.”
Rohee also declared that his party “did not believe the reports of Singh’s non-performance”. According to him, the party was not taking for granted what Government commentators had said of GuySuCo’s mismanagement.
“If there was a question of non performance during our time, we would have dealt with it. But as far as we were concerned there was no question of non performance.”
Asked about Dr. Singh’s request for a $16B bailout shortly before he and his board were sent packing, Rohee stated that the request had been in the pipelines during the tenth parliament and as such was nothing new.
Litany of trouble
As CEO of Guysuco, Singh presided over a two decades of low in production despite billions of dollars

being pumped into the state-owned entity, which at one time was the country’s biggest foreign currency earner.
As CEO, Singh mounted the platform, to openly campaign for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic during the recent General and Regional Elections.
Last week Monday, in the first indication that there would have been clashes, Singh reportedly told the workers’ union that the Corporation was preparing to close the operations of the seven estates until it gets an urgent cash injection by the end of the month (Sunday).
The cash was to pay junior and senior staffers and suppliers.
However, Minister Noel Holder made it clear that he was not informed of the dire cash situation by the CEO despite a meeting earlier that day.
Through Government’s intervention, US$2M loan from a Jamaican bank averted the crisis over the weekend.
But it became increasingly clear that the new Government was not comfortable with the CEO.
Last week also, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo called on Singh and the Board to resign because of their dismal performance.
Sitting on the board were Shaik Baksh – Chairman; and members Dr. Dindyal Permaul, Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA); Badri Persaud, Managing Director, Guyana Oil (Guyoil) and Geeta Singh-Knight.
GuySuCo is projected to record a $17B deficit this year. The Corporation has been in deep trouble for years and was a major talking point leading up to the elections.
The David Granger-led Government has made it clear that there will be no closure of the industry despite its woes, but the Management of GuySuCo is expected to be run in a different direction.
Consecutive sugar crops along with a poor string of performance for its new flagship US$200M factory at Skeldon has sunk the industry to a two-decade low, despite the release of billions of dollars for the Corporation over the years.
The industry is also producing sugar at a cost double what it is selling for. At one time there were accusations by the workers’ unions that Guysuco’s management has been employing poor planting and ill-advised harvesting techniques.
Its biggest customer, the European Union, has slashed the price of sugar by some 36 percent and is set to open its markets to other players, forcing Guyana, a preferential customer, to now improve its dismal efficiency.
Under the tenure of Singh, Guysuco was offered a three-year contract from its European customer, Tate and Lyle, worth over $14B, in 2012 at a time when the price for sugar was over US$700 per tonne.
This offer was rejected by the Guysuco Board of Directors, with hopes that the price for sugar would increase further.
On the contrary, the price for sugar plummeted so that by 2013, when Tate renewed its offer to Guysuco of another contract, the price for sugar was US$500 per tonne.
The Guysuco Board rejected this offer as well.
The resulting losses have been placed by sugar unions such as National Association of Agricultural Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE), in the region of US$14B and brought much criticism on Dr. Singh’s board.
By the end of 2014, the price of sugar had dropped to a lackluster US$350 per tonne.
It had also been pointed out that the US$14B would have played a significant role in aiding the cash strapped Corporation.
With over US$50M sunk into GuySuCo within recent years, the previous PPP/C Government had promised to invest more than US$100M over a five-year period to help the industry.
Recently, GuySuCo sold its Wartsila co-generation facility at the new Skeldon factory, just over five years old, to the Guyana Power and Light Inc. for US$30M.
It collected about US$20M ($4B) and is awaiting the remaining US$10M ($2B).
Two weeks ago, GuySuCo announced that its first crop fell short of the 86,201 tonnes of sugar by some 5,000 tonnes.
The Management, however, failed to disclose that Skeldon had done so badly, only managing about half of the 17,214 tonnes it had set for that factory.
Skeldon factory, commissioned in 2009, was once hailed by former President Bharrat Jagdeo as a saviour to the sugar industry, but has never been able to make a significantly positive impact and has instead served as a drain on Guyana’s sugar industry.

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