The selling off of sugar will bring fat profits to foreigners

Jul 02, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
It was quite interesting to read an article on June 28, 2017 which reported that Government-appointed sugar salesman, Wesley Kirton stated that several foreign-owned companies have expressed interest in investing in the sugar industry. Mr. Kirton mentioned, among other things, that there is talk about investment into a sugar refinery to tap the lucrative Caribbean market. In a previous letter, I did share with the Guyanese public a GuySuCo document in which the sugar company advised the Government to inform investors about the potential for sugar refining and the windfalls that can be had.
Clearly, from Mr. Kirton’s statements the investors have been advised and they are naturally enthused. It is saddening that the state-owned sugar company is operating in such a hand in glove manner especially when that windfall rightly and correctly belongs to Guyana and Guyanese.
The article goes on to say that among the interested parties is US multinational American Sugar Refiners (ASR), one of its subsidiaries being Tate and Lyle. ASR was a name, I understand, among those interested in acquiring Skeldon, but they were seeking a straw buyer to make the purchase on their behalf à la D. Rampersaud of Trinidad and Tobago. ASR, I was also made to understand, had meetings with very high ranking Guyanese officials abroad. One can’t help to wonder whether any pact has already been sealed.
ASR also has some interests in Booker Tate. The latter had managed GuySuCo in the past and also, through a separate contract, managed the design and supervision of the Skeldon factory as well as the accompanying agricultural expansion. Their ‘experts’ had approved and signed off on all works and the components that were delivered and installed at Skeldon. Many are aware that the current GuySuCo CEO, who according to what I have read in the press is exorbitantly paid, was at one time a senior Booker-Tate official. The point here is that we see the entrance of ASR into the fray at the same time one of its former senior official heads the Corporation.
Well it does seem that the puzzle is slowly coming together and the picture is becoming clearer. One cannot help but see what is an apparently a well-rehearsed and very much laid out plan that would see billions of dollars rightly belonging to GuySuCo and Guyanese being siphoned off to aristocrats in foreign lands. If my memory serves me right, wasn’t national ownership of sugar in the mid-70’s after independence one of the high points of the LFS Burnham administration? Well! Well! Well!
Patricia Persaud

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News