The Board of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guy-suco) cannot be blamed for the state-owned company’s woes say PPP Presidential Candidate, Donald Ramotar – a longtime board member.
Asked about views that he should take some of the blame for troubles facing the company particularly given his long tenure there, Ramotar, in an interview with Stabroek News last Friday responded that in the same light he also be praised for its successes as well. “I don’t think that you can blame the board because the board is a policy board, it’s not a day-to-day board. I’m not managing the industry. I sit on the board where we make policy. I don’t think that there’s a policy that you can point to at the level of the board that you would say is necessarily wrong”, he said.
Ramotar pointed out that the industry has come a long way from 1990 when it was producing 129, 000 tonnes of sugar to over 300 000 tonnes in 2004. “So are you gonna give me the praise that I’ve been there and because of my stewardship of the board that’s why it has gone so far”, he asked.
He pointed to the difficulties the industry has faced since the 2005 Great Flood, followed by the price cuts and loss of guaranteed markets in Europe. “The Skeldon (sugar factory) investment has not come fully on (stream). I think, my own view, is it’s a temporary thing, it’s very temporary. I think … that Skeldon will prove to be a benefit, a major benefit to this country but at the moment it has not given the benefit that we had hoped would already have been there”, he said.
Ramotar stressed that there have been many other “good things” pointing to the new sugar packaging plant at Enmore as something that can compensate for some of the losses. He noted that the rationale behind Skeldon was going into bigger production, modernizing the industry and bringing down the unit cost of production.
He said that a lot of the problems have nothing to do with Guysuco’s management or government. In relation to the workers and the strikes that plague the company, he noted that a lot of these strikes are localized but stressed the need for better communication with workers and educating them on what is taking place in the industry locally and internationally. He noted the direction that the corporation needs to move in pointing out that with money being spent on education and development it follows that the unskilled labour the industry depends on will be reduced and it brings the great need for some level of mechanization.
Ramotar also defended government’s workers’ policies pointing to the passage of the law that allows workers the right to be represented by a union of their choices, improvements in the minimum wage and disposable income as well as the signing of more International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions than probably any other government here. He admitted that some of them are not adhered to citing the level of economic development but at least the government has shown a strong indication of direction where it is going, he said.
“I don’t have the figure at my disposal but probably it’s about 10% or 5 I would say… I don’t have those figures with me but it has certainly come down a long way from what it used to be”, Ramotar said when questioned on the present unemployment rate. He referred to projects in the pipeline that would roll over into a new administration, such as the fibre-optic cable from Brazil, hat are going to create new jobs. “We can very well experience shortage of labour in this country once we get many of these things on stream,” said Ramotar.
While agreeing that the minimum wage is not enough, Ramotar said that it must be looked at in totality with non-wage benefits being provided to workers. The minimum wage in government is just above $34,000 per month and he said that as the economy improves it must be ensured that the working people receive a good share of what is produced.
Ramotar said that it has come from a situation when the income tax threshold per year was $72,000 in 1992 to $480,000 now. “So the range of disposable income for people earning salaries today is far, far greater than it ever was before”, he said also pointing to non-wage benefits now provided and the money being sunk into the housing, education and health services. “I think a lot of these non-wage benefits, you have to look how much has been going into these areas and these are not insignificant things”, he said. He also pointed to the removal of the means test for pensions and the programmes to help single parents. “So I think that you have to take these things in a totality sometimes when you look at this”, he said.
Further, Ramotar objected to the view that economic growth has not been as much as would have been expected during the last 19 years of PPP/C governnance. He said that Guyana’s small internal market, its strong dependence on the international market and what is happening internationally has to be taken into account. In light of the financial and other crises, that Guyana’s economy has grown is a “very great achievement”, he said.
In terms of the lack of adding value to the country’s main products such as rice and sugar, Ramotar responded that the projects that are essential to this are in the pipeline. The lack of cheap, reliable electricity has held back, particularly processing and manufacturing, and this is where hydro-power can come in, he said, also citing the bauxite industry as one that can benefit.
In terms of the state’s role in the economy if he were to win, Ramotar pointed out that while worldwide, the private sector is looked to generally as an area of growth, there are many areas here where the private sector has not taken up the challenge like in some value-added areas.“There could be areas in where the private sector might be reluctant to go for one reason or the other that if my team is convinced that it’s something that is very important for the country, that I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of the state getting involved in some of these type of activities,” he said.
