Latest update November 5th, 2024 1:00 AM
Govt. announces availability of sugar at reduced prices
Kaieteur News – Following numerous complaints relating to the lack of sugar and a resulting hike in the commodity, President Irfaan Ali on Wednesday announced that as of July 21, 2022 (today) the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) will not only be making sugar available across the country but at reduce prices – $150 per pound package and $140 per pound bulk.
For a number of weeks, consumers have been complaining about the shortage of sugar on the local market which triggered an increase in prices. Kaieteur News had visited a few supermarkets and found that sugar was indeed in short supply. Popular supermarkets such as Bounty, Massy, DSL and Mattai’s had been reporting a shortage of the packaged Demerara Gold sugar and were uncertain as to when they would be able to replenish their stock.
In announcing that the availability of sugar in the country, the President in an official announcement via a Facebook post on Wednesday said, “My brothers and sisters, I have heard your concerns about the availability and price of sugar in Guyana. To this end and to avoid price gouging, the Guyana Marketing Corporation will be selling sugar at $150/pound for packaged and $140/pound for bulk.”
Therefore, the GMC, from today, will be distributing sugar to different agencies and consumers in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and 10.
Despite evidence of a sugar shortage, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh, had explained that there was no shortage of bulk sugar but rather a shortage of packaged sugar.
The CEO had explained that “GuySuCo doesn’t have shortage of bagged sugar, what GuySuCo has is a shortage of its packaged sugar, but you can only do packaged sugar when we are grinding.”
In fact, he noted that the corporation has not been able to grind 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 backtrack. So we had to take control of that, because Guyanese sugar has to go first to Guyanese,” he’d explained.
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.
The Uitvlugt Estate was inoperable since March due to mechanical issues of its #1Mill turbine gearbox. The gearbox had to be replaced with a new one from overseas. After being recently replaced and installed, the Estate has since recommenced its bagging operation and had reportedly accumulated over 2,000 bags of sugar.
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