Introduction
Before considering options for the way forward in the sugar industry, I shall first examine challenges posed by its underperformance as revealed in the behaviour of the standard performance measures since the 1990s as well as last week’s analysis of Guysuco’s predicament. Taken together these two items elaborate clearly several strategic mis-steps, which Guysuco has made since the mid 1970s.
The most striking of these lies in the design and execution of the Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project (SSMP). For all intents and purposes Guysuco had intended the SSMP to be its defining response to the several difficulties facing the industry during the 1990s. The project was initiated under Guysuco’s Ten-year Strategic Plan, 1998-2008 (which was approved by the then PPP/C Government of Guyana). In that Plan the SSMP was identified as first priority for restructuring and placing the industry on a globally competitive footing.
SSMP
However it is not widely appreciated that, as initially formulated, the SSMP had two essential features. The first was, the construction of a brand new factory at Skeldon (Its specifications are indicated at the end of this column), and the second was the expansion of cultivated cane acreage amounting to about 13,000 hectares. Achieving the latter required substantial complementary investments in