Introduction
The serious weaknesses and massive underperformance of Guyana’s sugar industry during the past two to three decades were revealed in previous columns, through an evaluation of six standard performance measures that are routinely applied to the assessment of sugar industries. worldwide. These weaknesses have fundamental political economy explanations, one of which arises from a series of strategic mis-steps, which Guysuco has made in policy formulation and implementation. Three of these mis-steps are considered here.
Guysuco’s Illogic
Firstly, Guysuco has failed to diagnose the fundamental dynamics of the economic illogic/ contradictions indicated by the behaviour of the six performance measures. In truth, there are four separate, but integrally related elements to this economic illogic, namely: 1) the measures clearly reveal the unit cost (US cents per lb) of producing sugar for export in Guyana will long remain significantly higher than for other global sugar producers/exporters. And, if Guyana remains a substantial sugar producer,