-Persaud tells Parliament committee
Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud has credited GuySuCo’s turnaround plan with significantly cutting costs last year to the tune of some $2 billion, including a sizeable chunk in management costs.
Persaud, according to the Government Information Agency, said some $300 million in management costs were cut and he called that “positive results” from the turnaround plan. He indicated that GuySuCo had undertaken a cost reduction exercise in keeping with the industry’s blueprint for success.
Addressing a meeting of the Economic Services Committee of Parliament yesterday, Persaud also mentioned that the cost of cultivating a hectare of land has dropped to $490,000 from $650,000. This was a major objective of the turnaround plan. He reported that GuySuCo has set a production target this year of 280,000 tonnes of sugar and spoke of the initiatives being tackled to ramp up poor cane supply.
Persaud also touched on the pace at which private cane farmers are moving saying that they surpassed the production level established by more than 50% last year. The Guyana Agricultural and General Worker’s Union (GAWU) had cited the success of private cane farmers some two months ago when it criticized the pace at which GuySuCo was moving.
According to GINA, Persaud said also that several new persons and farming cooperatives have shown interest in continuing to expand private sugar cane cultivation, both in Demerara and Berbice.
The minister also referred to government’s financial boost to the cash-strapped industry stating that the Ministry of Housing and Water had injected some $4 billion for 2,000 acres of land for housing development on the East Bank Demerara. An additional $1.4 billion also went to the industry and according to Persaud, this represents interest payments on outstanding loans to the administration that were waived.
PNCR-1G Member of Parliament Winston Murray questioned whether sugar workers stand to lose jobs in the field as GuySuCo moves ahead with its mechanization programme and Persaud insisted that the government has no plans to retrench anyone. Murray pointed to the turnaround plan, which shows that employment would drop annually up to 2014 saying it correlated with the increased use of mechanization by GuySuCo which would see 41 percent of cultivated land harvested and loaded mechanically. Persaud insisted that there was no correlation and cited other factors which would result in the decline of the work force.
GuySuCo’s turnaround plan was handed over last year by the Interim Board and it envisages stepped up mechanization, transforming the Enmore estate into an important hub, ending grinding at LBI, an ethanol plant and transferring health and community services to the state.