GuySuCo CEO confirms shortage of packaged sugar

Jul 16, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Emphasizing that there is no shortage of bulk sugar countrywide, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh, however confirmed that there is a shortage of the packaged sugar on the local market.

Shelves of supermarkets Kaieteur News visited that did not had the Demerara Gold Sugar in store

Singh, who made the confirmation in a GuySuCo video which was posted yesterday on its social media page, guaranteed that the packaged sugar is going to be back on the market within the next two weeks.

The CEO in his brief explanation said “GuySuCo doesn’t have shortage of bagged sugar, what GuySuCo have is a shortage of its packaged sugar, but you can only do packaged sugar when we are grinding.”

He noted that presently they are in production and they have not ground sugar cane since the end of May 2022.

“So we had stocks put aside but all of it was sold out in the local market and unfortunately, we got wind that some of our sugar is being smuggled to a foreign country by the back track. So we had to take control of that, because Guyanese sugar has to go first to Guyanese,” he briefed.

Following reports that there was a shortage of sugar at local supermarkets, Kaieteur News last week visited a few supermarkets which indeed had limited to no sugar.

A number of popular supermarkets such as Bounty, Massy, DSL and Mattai’s had been reporting that there is a shortage of the packaged sugar (Demerara Gold) and were uncertain as to when they would have in stock.

GuySuCo has since however, informed the public via a Facebook post yesterday, that the Demerara Gold Sugar is back in stock at the Mattai’s supermarket.

Several supermarkets at the time were selling the ‘Eagle’ white sugar or loose brown sugar.

While the CEO insists that there is no shortage of sugar across the country, the Bank of Guyana in its quarterly report stated that this year there were decreases in the production of sugar by 47.7 percent.

The decrease recorded this year by the Bank was attributed to the halt in grinding at the Uitvlugt Sugar Estate, caused by mechanical issues, which impacted production, as this estate was responsible for 25 percent of output.

As reported on, the Uitvlugt Estate was down since March due to mechanical issues of its #1Mill turbine gearbox. The gearbox had to be replaced with a new one from overseas.

Assuring that GuySuCo’s focus is to make sure the local supermarkets, bakers and manufacturers have sufficient supply of sugar, Singh disclosed that the Uitvlugt Factory which was out of operation for some months is now grinding to commence back production.

The Corporation in a release said that Uitvlugt Estate commenced its bagging operations on Thursday, July 14 and had already accumulated close to 2,000 bags of sugar.

“The Estate is progressing swiftly to maintain its bagging operations throughout the weekend and the following weeks. The Estate’s management continues to work diligently to ensure grinding operations remain steady and encourage all workers to strive towards achieving set weekly sugar production targets,” the release noted.