We did nothing as far as I can see, Mr. Sohan

Mar 08, 2018 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I wonder what Mr Charles Sohan means by “three years” of mismanagement and heavy losses in our sugar industry. Sugar has been mismanaged and has been losing money for much longer than three years. And it is not today that our cost of production is higher than the world market price for sugar. That too has been the case for more years than I care to remember.
For years we have enjoyed a quota in the European Union which paid us more than the world price. But we knew from the outset that the EU arrangement was not for eternity.
It was an arrangement for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries to tide us over while we put in place changes that would enable us to compete with other sugar producers.
We knew that it would finally come to an end in 2017. There was no secret about that. I would have thought that the previous administration, who were supported by the vast majority of workers in the sugar industry, would have developed plans for that transition a long time ago.
I went to work at Caroni (1975) Ltd, the Trinidadian equivalent of GuySuCo, in 1981.
They were already preparing for the transition. And Trinidad and Tobago, unlike Guyana, already had an oil industry; but they did not assume that they could use oil revenues to subsidize unprofitable sugar. They were looking, for example, at alternative crops like citrus fruits and pigeon peas; the allocation of lands so that workers could become cane farmers and increasing mechanization.
Brazil, with oil plus a much larger economy than ours, was turning cane sugar into automobile fuel. That was the 1980s.
What was Guyana doing in the 1980s, the 1990s and the early 21st century, other than buying an expensive factory that we have never operated efficiently? Why was the PPP/Civic Government, supported by the majority of sugar workers, not planning for the inevitable end of the EU preferential agreement, when we would have to sell our sugar at the world market price?
I recognize that our present government has blundered and has acted stupidly, to put it mildly, in a number of instances. However, the problems in our sugar industry are not the result of actions or lack thereof in the last three years.
They have been staring us in the face for more than three decades. But we have done nothing, other than encourage strikes and inefficient production.
I thought that Trinidadians failed to understand the harsh realities of life when they argued that Trinidad was subsidizing Europeans, because the Europeans were paying them less that the cost of production.
Let us face this: Nobody is obliged to pay us the cost of production of anything, when they can get the product at less cost elsewhere. But at least Trinidadians were looking for alternatives to the production of simple raw sugar, in a world where sugar can be produced far more efficiently and at less cost than our cane sugar; and where, moreover, increasing concern about the hazards of obesity could well result in reduced demand for sugar. We did nothing as far as I can see.
Pat Robinson Commissiong

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