SAVING THE SUGAR INDUSTRY

Jan 27, 2018 Editorial

It seems that something is terribly wrong with the opposition. Their recent behaviour in Parliament suggests that there is more than a little wrong. In the past two years, the government has had more than a dozen Commissions of Inquiry; one of those was to determine the future of the sugar industry, why it collapsed, the efforts to save it and to understand why the PPP did not take corrective measures or at least tried to ease the financial burden on the treasury.
Since taking office in May 2015, the government has been trying to make GUYSUCO viable. It inherited a bankrupt sugar industry from the last administration. It had to subsidize the industry in the amount of $32 billion in just two years. The truth is the last administration was fully aware that the sugar industry was insolvent and that the cost to produce sugar was almost three times more than the price for it on the world market.
Instead of making the unpopular decisions to close some of the sugar estates as this government has done, the PPP has spent more than $120 billion of public funds to subsidize GUYSUCO, and another US$200 million to build the Skeldon sugar factory that has never worked to full capacity. After five years it has been closed.
While some believe that the PPP made the correct decision to keep the industry afloat if only for the foreign currency it yields, others say that it was a penny wise and pound foolish decision.
Experts have concluded that it was the right, though unpopular decision to close three sugar factories and save the taxpayers billions of dollars in subsidies. They have concluded that sugar which was once king and the country’s major foreign currency earner is now dead. But the opposition and GAWU continue to accuse the government of being not concerned with the plight of the sugar workers.
Lest we forget, former President Donald Ramotar sat on the Board of Directors of GUYSUCO for many years and did not implement any of the ideas he now espouses so glowingly in letters in this and other publications as to how to save the industry. No one in their right mind, not even the sugar workers should take him seriously.
He may just be a mouthpiece for the failures of his party, which apart from subsidies, did little or nothing to improve the ailing sugar industry in the last 23 years, not even during his short-lived presidency.
Fundamentally, the sugar workers were considered political pawns to the PPP, which in every election since 1992, has made huge promises to the sugar workers only to break them after being elected. It is time for the sugar-workers to wake-up and stop being political pawns to the opposition and acknowledge that this government has their long-term interest at heart.
It was wrong for the PPP while in office to pump billions of dollars into GUYSUCO without a sustainable plan or strategy to make it viable.
The sugar workers have suffered under successive regimes which had promised to modernise the industry and improve their well-being but has done completely the opposite. This government must now embark on a transparent and proactive strategy in the best interest of the sugar workers, GUYSUCO and the country as a whole

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