By Pushpa Balgobin
The Guyana Sugar Corpora-tion will officially record its lowest first crop ever this year but Chief Executive Officer Paul Bhim is hopeful that the deficit can be reduced in the second crop and he assured that the key European quota will be met.
GuySuCo has produced “a hundred tonnes shy of the 48,000 tonnes if you want to be completely accurate in this first crop of the year,” Bhim told Stabroek News yesterday. He further noted that the first crop production was “dismal” and that such low production was “obviously a letdown” but the company could only make changes to the second crop in the hopes of making up the deficit.
Bhim said “yeah as far as I am aware this is the lowest production that we’ve ever had as far as the records go”. Last year’s first crop was 67,299 tonnes. He said that while production was significantly less than the 70,000 first crop target Guyana will not need to import sugar and the European Union sugar quota – Guyana’s biggest and most lucrative market of 167,000 tonnes – is not in jeopardy.
“Guyana needs two thousand tonnes per month (for the local market) and there is adequate stock for that so at this point sugar imports is not something that is likely to happen,” Bhim stated. He said that GuySuCo was prepared to still serve the domestic market and production levels were well above the needs.
Bhim added that the EU quotas were sufficiently met and were measured on the yearly basis. He highlighted that if the first crop was not enough there was the second crop to fulfil quotas; however he said this would not be the case this year.
The GuySuCo CEO was optimistic about the second crop noting that the state-owned Corporation would begin the second season earlier, in June, to assist with the first crop deficit. He said that the first crop was producing a tonne of sugar for approximately four and a half to five hectares of cane. Bhim also stated that the average production across the estates was 12.5 tonnes of cane per tonne of sugar. He said that the numbers were not great but they were sufficient. However, Bhim noted that the amount of cane planted was not enough.
Bhim told Stabroek News “there just wasn’t enough cane, listen cane is a funny thing it has to be harvested at the right time and the fields need to be cared for…we just haven’t been growing the right amount of cane and we really need to push for the replanting programme”. He stated that “in many ways we are still suffering from the weather in 2010 and the cane itself isn’t able to give the yield.”
Bhim said that the actual weather patterns and the seasonal changes play a big role in cane production and that GuySuCo was admittedly slow to accept the unforeseeable changes in weather conditions. “We don’t have the same amount of opportunity days, 60 sometimes that not enough and the season itself is shorter”. He said that GuySuCo was slow to acknowledge that changes had to be made and as a result the industry does suffer and playing catch up was an additional burden. Bhim said the industry was slow to change and there was a dramatic exodus from the industry, “we aren’t growing the amount of cane and we don’t have the people anymore.”
Bhim stated “in 2004 when we did something like 325,000 (tonnes) that year we only had one estate that was mechanically loading, the rest had people cutting and loading and that is hard work”. He noted that “mechanization is the future of course but we have a labour shortage and we can’t pay”. He was referring to the actual basic wage for cane harvesters not being competitive. “This is a catch 22 we can’t offer a better basic wage because we aren’t making the targets to make larger profits and we can’t do that because we are losing people from the industry and things are changing now, people aren’t staying with GuySuCo for 20, 30 years”, Bhim said. He added “we have a huge financial problem and we can’t see our way out of it and with labour dwindling we have to turn to mechanization”. Bhim admitted that this may have not been done in a timely manner and the corporation is struggling to catch up.
Skeldon
On the major problems besetting its US$110M flagship factory, GuySuCo’s CEO told Stabroek News that “GuySuCo is not Skeldon”. He continued that the factory which has been described by critics as a white elephant takes away from the amount of work actually being done at the six additional estates. “Skeldon of course is disappointing, but the cane being grown for Skeldon is not enough,” Bhim said. He further noted that the Skeldon factory’s poor production made famers hesitant and uneasy about growing more cane, “we have famers that are not growing enough cane but if they are unsure of making their money back… this is the current situation.“
Bhim stated that the South African company hired to fix some of the problems at the Skeldon factory controversially built by the Chinese company CNTIC was almost finished. He stated that Bosch Engineering had to do some work on the conveyor, but that the problems arise as the factory is pushed. He stated that “the firm isn’t here all the times of course. They are here two or three weeks and fix what needs to be done and then they are done”. Bhim noted that for much of the problems it was a wait and see situation. He called the continued rash of factory problems “unfortunate” but noted that they had to continue working on the factory.
Bhim said of the original design and concept of the Skeldon factory that “there was a period of time that we could’ve went and said these things aren’t working, but that time has passed and it is only once we started using the factory did the issues present themselves”. The CEO aded that in 2013 Skeldon was “still not operating up to its true rate.” Critics have said that instead of running at 350 tonnes of cane per hour, the factory was only around 200 tonnes of cane per hour.
GuySuCo’s CEO said that for now the corporation had to keep moving forward toward full mechanization and will begin assessing shorter and more harvesting seasons. When Stabroek News questioned Bhim as to why this was not already being done as GuySuCo has admitted to not being proactive to the changing tides in the past, Bhim stated that the corporation was looking ahead.
