President Irfaan Ali yesterday announced that a new management team is set to take the helm at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and sources have confirmed that accountant and businessman Paul Cheong is tipped to head the corporation.
Ali made the announcement of a new management team during an interview with reporters at the Local Content Summit, the Department of Public Information (DPI) said yesterday.
According to DPI, the President outlined several upcoming changes at the corporation while affirming the government’s commitment to providing the necessary investments to revive the sector and bolster its role as a key contributor to Guyana’s economy.
They said that the president revealed that GuySuCo will soon have a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to lead the corporation.
Stabroek News had reported that GuySuCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Sasenarine Singh was tipped to be Guyana’s new Ambassador to the European Union. Several sources yesterday confirmed that Cheong, who has a background in the cane planting industry, is expected to take up the role and lead the corporation.
Based on information gathered, senior staff meetings have been planned for Friday at the Rose Hall Estate where the new CEO will be visiting the cultivation as well.
According to the source, the Deputy CEO of GuySuCo is expected to come from GAWU as a senior official there has been asked to take up the position.
The source noted that in January President Ali had met with senior members at GuySuCo where he informed them that the new CEO would not come from the staff currently there.
President Ali yesterday said, “We have been working aggressively at modernizing GuySuCo. What we are doing is bringing a new structure. The current CEO will move into a new capacity, and we have a team that is coming,” the president said.
Additionally, President Ali disclosed that the government is recruiting specialists from various countries, including India and Cuba, to enhance GuySuCo’s operations.
“We have to address factory, agriculture, human resources, and the supply of labour. We are now in the process of bringing all of this together because sugar must be viable, and we are making the investment to make sugar viable again,” he asserted.
The source said, that a team from India is expected to shortly arrive in Guyana.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation is aiming to produce 100,000 tonnes of sugar for this year, Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha has said.
Mustapha during an outreach in Black Bush Polder pointed out that there was an increase in sugar production in 2023 as the corporation’s production moved from 40,000 in 2022 to 60,000 in 2023.
He said, “This year we have put a target of 100,000 tonnes, we will do a new five thousand hectares of cane back at Skeldon, we are now mechanizing the industry because with the different and more opportunities coming to Berbice, people are going to different sectors and we can’t abandon what we used to do like things like rice, sugar, fruits and vegetables.”
The minister stressed, “We have to continue to produce and we have to also change the way we have been doing these things so that we can do it in a more modern way, in a less labour-intensive way and we can produce more.”
Sources last year had told Stabroek News that the Albion Estate was leading the industry as at November it had produced 28,572 MT. The Blairmont estate had so far produced 17, 210 MT and the other two estates together had produced 9227 MT to bring the industry to its 55,009 MT production in November 2023. Official production figures for each estate last year have not been published.
Sugar output was boosted by the reopening of the Rose Hall Estate which continues to operate providing employment to hundreds within the Canje community.
