Only three of the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s eight estates met their production target for the week ending August 15th.
The three are Albion, Rose Hall and Blairmont, all in Berbice. It would mean that no estate on the East Demerara or West Demerara met their target. The troubled Skeldon estate also did not meet its target.
A release from GuySuCo yesterday said that for achieving their target, workers of the three estates have earned one day’s pay each as weekly production incentive.
“This achievement was not without its challenge with a recorded average rainfall 27.05 mm for the week. Rainfall currently being experienced is impacting negatively on the progress of the second crop 2015, especially in the Demerara region. During week ending 15th August, 2015 Mechanical harvesting (Billet harvesting) and Bell Loading operations were brought to a halt at East Demerara Estate due to wet infield conditions resulting from rain. Production for the crop as at 17th August was 12,775 tonnes of sugar with 93,918 tonnes produced for the year to date”, the release said.
GuySuCo and the industry are presently the subjects of a Commission of Inquiry on the way forward. The sugar corporation has a huge debt and has seen production slumping in recent years along with sliding prices, a labour shortage and increasingly unpredictable weather. The ambitious Skeldon factory has also been a huge drain on the industry while only producing a fraction of what was intended.
For the first crop this year, GuySuCo missed its 86,201 target and finished at 81,194 tonnes of sugar. The corporation had disclosed, prior to the dismissal of CEO Dr Rajendra Singh that the 2015 annual production target was 241,503 tonnes with the second crop targeted for 155,302 tonnes of sugar.
The second crop target has since been revised to a modest 146,000 tonnes. GuySuCo is hoping for a more realistic annual production target of 227,000 tonnes, down by almost 15,000 tonnes from the original 2015 target of 241,503 tonnes. In 2014, GuySuCo’s annual production was 216,000 tonnes and output in the second crop was 141,000 tonnes, 5,000 tonnes less than the second crop figure this year.
The new 2015 second crop production target is also more in line with the traditional 40/60 ratio for the first and second crops albeit still higher than what the first crop target of 86,201 tonnes would allow for. The first crop of 2015 produced 81,194 tonnes of sugar officially according to GuySuCo, just over 5,000 tonnes under target.
