Dear Editor,
Government should not have initiated or announced plans to close the Wales Estate before it had a viable alternative economic plan(s) for ensuring that any attempt to close the estate would not result in pervasive unemployment and economic ruin in the affected communities.
Last Friday, Moray House hosted a discussion on the estate’s proposed closure and I was curious to hear the feelings and sentiments of attendees, who included farmers and residents of the affected communities on West Demerara. The general consensus was the proposed closure was a surprise with little or no consultations and/or impact assessment and the closure would be devastating, both economically and socially, to the region.
One surprising discovery from the presentations was that Wales Estate was not the most poorly performing institution under the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) umbrella. If GuySuCo’s board is going to stand by the logic that the Wales Estate is a drain on the company’s overall financial performance then it follows the governing directors should also plan to close the other estates that are poorly performing. Of course, such a scenario is unlikely to materialize because of the economic and social calamity that would follow. The reason the government would not close all of the underperforming estates also should apply regarding its approach to Wales.
Moreover, the logic that the estate must be closed is based on the faulty assumption that GuySuCo would become a profitable entity once it shed some dead weight. The fact is that GuySuCo does not have the capacity to produce cane cheaper than other countries which have efficient processes and, in many cases, are heavily subsidized by their respective governments. It means, therefore, if we follow this logic then the entire company should be shuttered.
There are plenty of options to pursue instead of closing the estate. Privatization would be a good place to start. Government through GO-Invest should shop around and woo investors who would be interested in continuing the sugar operations or diversifying into other areas including animal feeds production, other types of crop farming, the production of renewable energy like ethanol to address Guyana’s electricity and power generation challenges and an expanded line of value-added products derived from sugarcane.
The ideal investor(s) would be medium to large-scale multinational corporations with the proven expertise to transform the Wales Estate into a money-making venture. Additionally, incentives and the public-private partnership model should not be discounted so as to become an attractive proposition to these potential investors.
Until a viable and comprehensive plan is fleshed out and presented to the people, then government should temporarily shelve the idea of closing the Wales Estate and examine the feasibility of other options for making this GuySuCo institution an economically viable enterprise.
Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling
