Dear Editor,
In a letter in the Stabroek News of December 8th, Mr Tony Vieira, a former legislator and management executive who has worked in the sugar industry for over 40 years, expressed the view that many tragedies appear to be unfolding at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) as it closes its sugar estates and destroying much of the fields’ infrastructure for other purposes as at Wales for rice cultivation. He felt that the abandoned cane fields took a generation to develop and they have enormous potential if converted to aquaculture ponds to rear fish/shrimps/prawns with financial returns eight times more than that presently obtained from sugar production. He provided no data to support his claim and further implied that the government should undertake such
conversion.
The predicament of the sugar industry however, has shown that since independence no political party, PNC, PPP, APNU+AFC, has ever managed a government-owned enterprise successfully. The profitable sugar industry, since nationalisation, has been in a downward spiral incurring huge losses in its operation and has been kept alive only by large government subsidies. The APNU+AFC government has closed five of the eight sugar estates it inherited and it’s only a matter of time before the remaining three goes under as sugar production in Guyana is no more a viable industry and it is unlikely to be so in the foreseeable future because of its current huge debt and the large capital investment needed for its modernisation to return to profitability.
The government is yet to make a final determination as to the future of GuySuCo while it ponders to find money to pay the sugar workers and diversify into ethanol and white sugar production with false hopes for a turnaround. Mr Vieira, once on GuySuCo’s Board, suggests that a final determination should be made to convert the cane fields into aquaculture ponds to rear fish and shrimps which will make GuySuCo profitable and service its debt – a pipe dream!
Elections are expected to be held early next year and the major political parties have been making claims that once in control, they could turn the industry around and return it to prosperity. This is all poppycock to win votes and the desperate sugar workers should reflect on their predicament and vote for a government which will quickly dispose of the assets of GuySuCo and use the proceeds to compensate them. This is the reality of the situation.
Ironically, Mr Vieira, during his management of the Versailles and Houston sugar estates and subsequent guidance of their closures, never suggested that their sugar lands be converted into aquaculture ponds to return the estates to profitability, but he finds it compelling to propound that GuySuCo should do so now. Mr Vieira is an astute businessman and he had concluded that his family’s estates will generate much more money if sold for real estate and other developments rather than conversion into aquaculture ponds, and so it was. The recent entanglement of Houston Estate with the City Council regarding taxes owed has shed some light as to how valuable sugar lands could be to their owners if sold for housing and other developments rather than such trumped-up ideas as aquaculture farming for which there is much to be learned.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan
