Dear Editor,
I refer to a recent article in K/N captioned “Mahipaul exposes sloth in the construction of 10 pumps by National Drainage and Irrigation Authority between 2020 and 2023”. Since March 2021, I was associated with the Ministry of Agriculture as a consultant. In the 2024 national budget of $1.14 trillion dollars, $97 billion was allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture. It is my opinion, having worked with that dysfunctional Ministry for the past 3 years, that we may as well throw the $97 billion into the Demerara River from the Demerara Harbour Bridge and watch it float out to the Atlantic. At least it will provide entertainment for us, and curb corruption.
I am going to start with GuySuCo. In his budget speech, Minister Singh stated that GuySuCo made a marvelous recovery in 2023 by producing 60,000 tonnes of sugar, compared to the previous year [2022] when it only made 47,049 tonnes – an improvement of 21.5%. Its bad practice for any Minister of Finance to be an author of science fiction. I am forced to puncture this bladder of lies with points of truth. In 2020, the APNU+AFC Government handed over a GuySuCo which produced 88,890 tonnes in that year. The next year, under its new PPP management, it produced 58,025 tonnes – a reduction of 34% – and the next year [2022] it was worse and produced only 45.7% of what was produced in 2020.
But in those two years, 2021 and 2022, the government handed over a total of probably G$9 or $10 billion of taxpayers’ money to an entity which was producing less and less of what it produced in 2020. The more money we throw away at it, the worst its production got. The reason? I saw firsthand the total mutilation of GuySuCo by a CEO whose only previous association with the Guyana sugar industry was what he puts in his coffee. For nearly two years, I and Chairman David watched, in total disbelief, the machinations of this man, and I asked myself who could have made such a ridiculous decision to appoint a person of that calibre to head one of our most important national corporations, which was in serious financial trouble for nearly two decades even before he entered the picture and made it much worse.
For two years we sought to restore some sanity to the situation, forcing the entire Board to meet with the President for an unprecedented four or five times to address the fact that management was not taking guidance from its Board, and nothing was being done to resolve the situation. This government knows nothing about the problems which the sugar industry faces, simply because the current local managers have no clue about what the corporation must do to succeed. They are doing exactly the same nonsense today, which made the East Demerara estates and the Skeldon project fail.
Today, I estimate that the Guyana Sugar Corporation is producing sugar at between 50 to 60 US cents per pound!! They are faced with a massive shortage of labour and are competing with an international industry which has completely mechanized all aspects of field work, harvesting, loading, planting, inter-row tillage between crops to remove the compaction caused by the heavy harvesters and loaders, fertilizer applications etc., and is producing at around 12 to 15 US cents per pound! When Guyana was competing with Australia and other countries, before the invention of the cane harvester, and the cane had to be harvested and loaded by hand, we could compete somewhat, but today it would be ridiculous to think that people fetching water in a bucket could compete with a diesel pump!! As ridiculous as it might seem, I think that is a very valid analogy. Louisiana USA, for example, employs around 18,000 people but produces around 1.9 million tonnes of sugar per annum, from 16 million tons of sugar cane, growing on around 500,000 acres. We, in comparison, are employing 8,000 people to produce 60,000 tonnes in 2023.
First of all, let’s see what Louisiana production parameters are like compared to GuySuCo. To make approx.1.9 million tons of sugar from around 16 million tons of cane tells me that they are taking approximately 8.42 tons of cane to make one ton of sugar. Guyana is taking twice as much cane to make one ton of sugar. Editor, we have to cut, load, transport to the factory, and grind, twice as much cane to make the same one ton of sugar as Louisiana. This approximation of 8 tons of cane to make one ton of sugar is also true for Brazil and Australia. In addition, to get 16 million tons of sugar cane from 500,000 acres suggests a yield of 32 tons of sugar cane per acre. Adjusting for hectare to acre conversion, we are getting much less than half that amount of cane yield per acre here in Guyana. The term “flogging a dead horse” comes to mind. They have no idea what they are doing, refuse to diversify and will never become competitive on their current trajectory.
I also saw firsthand, the machinations of the dysfunctional fisheries department of the MOA, and I can easily say it is no wonder that our fishing and shrimping industries have both failed under it. The NDIA is also a national disgrace just as M.P. Mahipaul disclosed in this budget speech. Finally, Editor, I consider spending 1.14 trillion, 40% of which is borrowed, as a mindboggling act of idiocy given our situation. This is a country which has very limited skills, the government itself is saying so. Spending a substantial portion of $1.14 trillion on public works, in a country where the level of corruption guarantees that some will be siphoned off ‘for the benefit of the boys’, leaves say 60-70 percent to do the actual work, and given the shortage of skills including technically skilled and qualified management material, poor and mostly corrupt contractors who are not properly monitored, who deliberately buy cheap substandard materials to maximize their profits, an inevitability given the poor oversight employed by the government, guarantees that what is left on the ground, as assets for the Guyanese people, will be inferior in quality and mal-functional. So why are we planning to accelerate projects under these conditions?
And it does not stop there, now we are informed that with the current fragile oil prices, we can borrow $400 billion this year, even though our Guyanese monthly wage is US$430, compared to Trinidad US$ 1,274; and Barbados’ US$ 6,971; we are not increasing the low wages of our long suffering workers but we are planning to bring Cubans here to do the work since our trained people are migrating heavily.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira
