With sugar production for the year at 220,000 tonnes, Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Paul Bhim confirmed yesterday that the revised target set for the year is out of reach.
Earlier this month, President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) Komal Chand told this newspaper that GuySuCo was unlikely to achieve the revised target of 282,000 tonnes.
Bhim told this newspaper yesterday that the corporation will continue to grind canes up until the second week in December and added that the production figure will advance towards the revised target. He said that the East Demerara estates were still producing sugar while operations were winding down at the Uitvlugt estate. The original target was 300,000 tonnes.
Although Bhim did not have on hand figures of production for the troubled Skeldon factory, he noted that it will continue to produce sugar until mid-December. He said, however, that the weather has been a factor affecting production at Skeldon and, according to him, last month there were disruptions due to weather at the estate.
Meantime, Bhim noted that several identifiable defects at the Skeldon factory are still being examined but he noted that while some have been remedied, other aspects of corrective works are on hold until operations at the factory ends in a few weeks time. The US$200M investment by the government has been at the centre of criticism since its unveiling. In August this year, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud told a news conference that the sugar corporation was unable to run the factory, saying that it did not have the relevant expertise.
The Skeldon factory was built by the Chinese company China National Technology Import and Export Corp (CNTIC). The decision to put construction in the hands of CNTIC had been severely criticised. The old Skeldon factory was rated at 92 tonnes of cane per hour while the new factory has the capacity to process 350 tonnes per hour, but is performing far below this.
