We cannot afford to have dreamers in charge of sugar and our country

Dec 14, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Allow me to comment on the absurdities and sheer stupidity, I have been hearing from government sponsored quarters, on this latest adventure of this company, Demerara Sugar Refinery (DSR). Is this an effort to put millions in the pockets of a few, at the expense of taxpayers? If this be the case, it will be a betrayal of our slave and indentured ancestors who toiled for generations on the sugar plantations.

As a youngster growing up in the main urban center, my knowledge of sugar and sugarcane didn’t go much beyond sucking creole cane from our yard, until my jaws were swollen, and sweetening just about everything from swank to mauby, tea and coffee, buns and sweet bread. However, when I was assigned the portfolio vice-president of production, I was forced to study and understand the complexities of sugarcane production, its by-products, and how to maintain its viability in a fast-changing world, with competition from countries whose cost of production was less than ours.

To atone the ravages of the plantation system our erstwhile masters, the Europeans granted us a preferential price for our sugar, in other words a subsidy. Instead of using this opportunity effectively, the PPP embarked on disastrous schemes, including the failed Skeldon project.

For brevity, I just allude to some unpardonable steps by the PPP, first is the appointment of a CEO with little or no working knowledge of the sugar industry, and knowledgeable persons have referred to the honourable gentleman as Mr. Clung. In any business, a key to success is competent management. We hear from this installed Chief Executive Officer that he too is confident that GuySuCo will meet the demand of the company DSR. The same management that has presided over a lower annual production target despite promises. One can only assume that GuySuCo will have a magic wand to change things around or are we witnessing the orchestration of a massive corruption scheme.

GuySuCo will deliver the raw bulk sugar to the refinery at world market prices; to make money for the refinery and its shareholders, and the people of Guyana will be absorbing the GuySuCo losses as usual. The present world market price for raw sugar is about US$308 per tonne, while GuySuCo present cost of production is about US$2200 per tonne, seven times higher than the current world market price.

GuySuCo’s cost of production is ridiculously high and totally unsustainable. This action by the PPP is gross incompetence, reckless spending or part of a wider scheme that betrays Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, Dr. JP Latchman Singh, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Harry Lall, Jane Philips Gaye, Forbes Burnham and the Enmore martyrs.

Be reminded that in a letter, GuySuCo sources claimed that the DSR capacity will be 100,000 tonnes of refined sugar annually to meet the Caribbean’s annual demand, which will be transformational for Guyana, because GuySuCo will no longer need to look at the international market. However, this is all nonsense, for several years now we have been expanding our packaging and bagging capacity to sell our sugar regionally and less has been sold as bulk in international European markets.

Editor, we cannot afford to have dreamers in charge of sugar and our country. We cannot afford to have people who are reckless in charge of sugar and our country. We cannot afford to have people who cannot or will not identify competence to manage our sugar and Guyana.

Sincerely,
Elder Hamilton Green

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Demerara Sugar Refinery, GUYSUCO, Letters, sugar

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