Former long-serving GuySuCo executive Dr Ian McDonald has urged that everything possible be done to save the sugar industry and called for focus on the market in CARICOM and other options.
In his column in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, McDonald cited four reasons for saving the industry which he said carried a weight which was beyond simple profit and loss.
He pointed out that the industry provides direct employment for 16,000 people and therefore a livelihood for as many as 90,000 Guyanese.
He noted that the industry brings in considerable foreign exchange which is very hard to replace and it does so with an ever-renewable resource.
Furthermore, estate operations also generate spin-off economic, social and infrastructure activity without which whole communities would deteriorate into deprivation and disorder.
He added that much of rural Guyana is historically held together by the framework of the sugar industry and if this fabric is abruptly rent, the socio-political consequences would be grave and disruptive.
“Those who manage the economy and the nation should, at the very least, make sure they have a good idea of how these four contributions are to be achieved in a sugar-less economy and society before taking any action which will effectively kill off an industry which still can give the nation so much and which sustains the lives of tens of thousands of Guyanese”, McDonald admonished.
In recent months, concerns have grown that neither the government nor GuySuCo has a viable plan for restructuring the industry. Despite promises by both the Ministry of Agriculture and GuySuCo, workers of the Wales estate which ended sugar cultivation on December 31st last year are still to be told of options in their community. Many have rejected the proposal to travel on a daily basis to the Utivlugt sugar estate for work.
McDonald, who ended his career in the sugar industry in 1999 as a Director of GuySuCo, acknowledged deficiencies in current knowledge of sugar’s strengths and weaknesses and said that his own experience with “other crops” in years past was that it was not the answer for the industry.
GuySuCo and the government have played up the possibility of “other crops” at Wales as a solution for workers but to date the only venture that has begun is the planting of seed paddy and this has not been greeted with enthusiasm by the workers. No other option has been presented to workers.
McDonald said that he thought that the better route would be to take advantage of, and lobby hard for, any premium bulk sugar markets which might be left in the US and in post-Brexit Britain while developing products like co-generation, refined sugar, special sugars, molasses and alcohol derivatives.
He added that at one point, GuySuCo sold 120,000 tonnes of sugar in CARICOM. “We should go hard for that market, our regional and legally protectable market.”, he asserted.
The government has been holding talks with the opposition, PPP/C and the two sugar unions on the way forward for the industry and announcements are likely to be made shortly.
The opposition PPP/C says that the government has signalled that it wants to close the Rose Hall and Enmore factories by yearend along with several cultivations.
