The Guyana Sugar Corporation is lagging behind with 35,400 tonnes produced up to the weekend; sugar figures which are reminiscent of 2013’s first crop, the worst in the corporation’s history at 48,000 tonnes.
GuySuCo is yet to formally announce the 2015 production target and has not confirmed the 240,000 tonnes disclosed by Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy to state media. So far sources have told Stabroek News that only the first crop target of 86,201 has been circulated and that the corporation’s CEO Raj Singh is still to pronounce on the year’s target.
Stabroek News has made multiple attempts to speak to Singh, but there has been no response.
GuySuCo traditionally sets its two crop targets at a 40:60 ratio which would ultimately result in an annual production target of 215,502 tonnes, well below the minister’s 240,000 tonnes claim. According to the 2013-2017 Strategic Plan the target for 2015 was supposed to be 312,871 tonnes.
Of the first crop target the Skeldon estate is responsible for just over 17,200 tonnes of sugar. Last year the corporation laboured to meet the estate’s 13,795 tonnes target at times grinding less than seven tonnes of sugar daily.
Stabroek News understands that all eight estates began grinding as of last week when the Skeldon estate finally came on board. The US$110 million Skeldon factory was struggling to prepare for the first crop with work ongoing on the punt dump which has persisted in being problematic.
During an appearance before Parliament’s Economic Services Committee in July last year the company’s Technical Services Manager Yusuf Abdul stated that to fix the ill-performing punt dump could cost US$4 million.
There has been significant controversy surrounding this figure as the rehabilitation of the punt dump was one of six projects that was supposed to be done by the South African firm Bosch Engineering.
With the revelation by Yusuf that the rehabilitation of the punt dump could be millions more, GuySuCo’s original quote of US$1.8 million would be inaccurate unless this is an additional sum that is required to facilitate further rehabilitation of the factory.
Since the end of the 2014 crop the state-owned corporation has skirted around the official sugar production figures, with both management and Ramsammy only disclosing that it was over 216,000 tonnes and the target was made.
Sugar production for 2014 ended up at a mere 142 tonnes over the 216,000 tonne target.
In 2014 according to the Strategic Plan GuySuCo was slated to produce 278,752 tonnes, this figure was altered in January of 2014 at the commencement of the first crop for the year Ramsammy.
Later in July of last year Singh stated that the production target was 219,000 tonnes highlighting that the target was increased due to the production projections after the first crop.
The 2014 first crop produced over 80,000 tonnes. Both sugar unions, the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), have accused the state-owned corporation of harvesting young cane.
NAACIE accused the corporation of “senseless pre-harvesting of pre-ripened cane causing poor quality production also compromising quality and production potential of the 2015 first crop” at the end of January.
It also cited fundamentally flawed management, a poor decision to reject the Tate and Lyle three-year contract in late 2012 for a mere one-year agreement thus resulting in significant financial loss to the Sugar Corporation for 2013 to 2015 inclusive.
