Reiterating the need for reforms, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo yesterday said that only diversification can save the sugar industry.
According to the text of remarks released by the Office of the Prime Minister, Nagamootoo said: “We need also to transform our sugar industry. The sugar industry remains the lifeblood for 16,000 Guyanese workers and their families. The industry was left in ruins with a debt of $89 billion. We pumped over $45 billion on the Skeldon factory, but the sugar industry is still on life support. Last year, we took $12 billion and this year another $11 billion from taxpayers to keep the sugar industry alive.”
He was speaking at a World Food Day ceremony at Zeskenderen, Mahaicony.
The PM stated that Guyana’s sugar is known globally as a premium product and said that it is perhaps “time we consider focusing on a niche market, producing the highest quality brown sugar for the purposes of high end bakeries, restaurants and the like. These are all discussions and explorations which need to take place so that we are not stuck in the old rot of doing the same thing now as we did in the 1900s and before”.
Nagamootoo, who regaled the audience with info about rice-based foods he consumed while on a recent visit to India said that the rice industry also has look at new options.
He said that rice, though experiencing some challenging times recently due mainly to the loss of market in Venezuela, remains viable.
“Guyana has made great progress in show-casing its rice. Packaging of Guyana’s rice has improved considerably through the efforts of some large scale millers and producers.
“Guyana’s rice can be seen on the supermarket shelves around the Caribbean. But rice is a base commodity. We need to also focus on value added products, cereals, biscuits, flour and a host of other product which are in demand across the world.
“We need to follow the examples of other countries where rice is used for value-added products. We need to go into agro-processing. Yesterday, I informed our Minister of Agriculture that, coming on the heels of my visit to India, that an exploratory team will be visiting Guyana soon. I will encourage them to invest in transforming the rice sector”, Nagamootoo stated.
The PM also called for a reorienting of the manner in which agriculture is pursued.
“We need to move away from seeing agriculture as a part time business. We can no longer think that it is enough to plant a kitchen garden, or to use the bed-heads of rice plots for greens, or divide up an acre of land into small patches of bora, bygaan, celery or peppers. We need large scale cultivation plots of one produce at a time”, he declared.
