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GuySuCo fooling government and the nation

Jan 28, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Based on press reports, GuySuCo provided a statement on its performance for the year 2019 in which it highlighted reasons for its appalling sugar production of 92,246 t sugar. The Corporation explained that it produced 17,000 t sugar less because of delayed capital investment, industrial unrests, mechanical failures and adverse weather conditions. From the reports, GuySuCo did not provide any sort of detail on the programmes it formulated to address the very factors that caused its underachievement by 17,000t sugar. The Corporation deliberately chose to highlight that 1,981 hectares (ha) of matured canes were not reaped resulting in a total of 151,000t of cane that will be taken over to 1st crop 2020.
Editor, in summary, GuySuCo is claiming that 1,981 hectares would have produced 151,000t cane and yielded 17,000t sugar if those canes were taken to factories. In examining these numbers, it shows that GuySuCo was expecting a cane yield of 76.22t of cane per hectare (tc/ha) and a sugar yield of 1 tonne sugar for every 8.88t cane (tcts).
Editor, 76.22tc/ha and 8.88tc/ts are all unrealistic performance levels, given GuySuCo’s past and current patterns of performance. In fact, GuySuCo, over the last 10yrs. produced cane at an average of 60.43tc/ha and produced sugar typically between 12-13tc/ts. It appears that GuySuCo was expecting something miraculous from this 1,981ha that it could not harvest in 2019 or, the Corporation made a mistake in its calculations or, the Corporation deliberately tried to fool government and the nation to cover-up gross mismanagement of core estates.
There is rapid decline in production and efficiency at Albion and Blairmont estates which are historically known as good performers. These estates were high level producers just 4 short years ago.
We are happy to hear about GuySuCo’s futuristic plans such as Plantation White Sugar, A-Grade Molasses and Cogeneration but GuySuCo needs to tell us more about its 2019 performance such as: What is the cost of production? What is the selling price of sugar? How much value added sugar was produced? What are the costs associated with agriculture, factory and administration? How much income was obtained from drainage services provided? Most importantly, what will GuySuCo do to mitigate the factors that affected production in 2019? We need to see these numbers to confirm that GuySuCo is right-sizing to become a viable and resilient business since diversification at Wales is now reclassified from a pleasant dream to a punishing nightmare.
The Corporation needs to effectively address the problems it has identified in 2019 or else White Sugar, A-Grade Molasses and Cogeneration will be failures. If the Board and Management cannot address 2019 factors of failure pointedly, they should all take lead from the Minister of Agriculture and gracefully bow-out.

Sookram Persaud

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