Retiring Chairman of the Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) Group of Companies Yesu Persaud has broadsided government for its handling of the sugar industry, saying the Skeldon Modernisation Project is costing taxpayers money and not producing what is was designed to while stressing the importance of returning focus on the fields and cane cultivation.
Last year, sugar production came in at 218,069 tonnes, the lowest production in over 20 years. And in the recent years prior, there had been a steady downward movement of the production, with the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) having to revise its targets during the year.
The Skeldon plant was built at a cost of almost US$200 million and the South African firm brought in to remedy many of the flaws that plagued it was paid an additional sum in the neighbourhood US$30 million.
During every budget presentation in the past four years, government has been doling out billions to GuySuCo as subsidies to ensure that the entity stays productive.
The company’s turnaround plan, launched in 2009 had envisaged an annual production of 450,000 tonnes annually. This has now been scrapped.
Persaud, now 85, took government to task and recalled the lowest production of the industry in 1991, saying that the government did what was necessary to return the production to acceptable levels. He said that it was when Booker Tate came in the early 1990s that the industry began to turn around.
At a press conference to announce his retirement from DDL after giving 48 years’ service, Persaud was asked about the sugar industry and what he thought of the dismal production results of late and whether he was concerned. “Yes I am concerned about sugar. It is a great concern and it should be for all of us,” he said. “Sugar is what brought all of us here,” he said, while emphasising how it is that sugar has a historical connection between the industry and its people.
“In 1969, Guyana produced 360,000 tonnes of sugar. What does it produce today?” he asked. Persaud is the former managing director of Demerara Sugar Company that operated in Guyana before the period of nationalisation in the in 1970s. Demerara Sugar Company then became Guyana Sugar Corporation and assumed the operations of the Berbice estates in addition to the Demerara estates.
In giving his opinion of what is needed for the industry, Persaud said that over the past years the government has ignored a number of necessities to prepare the fields to produce the cane needed for the amount of sugar targeted. “Sugar doesn’t grow in the factories but in the fields… you have to do a number of things before [you see the growth in the fields],” he said. Persaud said that the focus has been shifted from the planning of cane and the tilling of the land in preparation for cane cultivation.
On government’s flagship project, meant to return sugar to healthy production levels, Persaud criticised government for awarding the contract for the Skeldon Sugar Factory to a Chinese contractor, pointing out that China is not known as a sugar producing nation and opining that Brazil would have been a better country from which to source expertise to build a factory.
“You have a sugar factory that is [producing only a percentage of what it is designed to] and it is sitting there costing taxpayers’ money,” said Persaud.
