The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) last week received bids to design, supply, and install, a syrup clarifier at the Albion Estate and only two companies submitted tenders.
When the bids were opened at the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board on August 27, bids were received from Garnet Engineers and Excel Guyana Inc.
The companies and their bids are shown in the table below.
There was a major fire at the Albion estate on February 3 this year, and Chief Executive Officer of the corporation, Paul Cheong, had told this newspaper that it resulted in extensive damage to the bus bar that housed the 4MW [megawatt] turbine alternator control panels. A 2.5MW control panel and intercuts transformer panel and switch gears were also damaged. However, Cheong said that by the end of March they were rebuilt and testing showed no adverse effects. He informed that “full load testing with the entire factory operational will be done on the commencement of the crop. We don’t foresee any difficulty. Despite the fire, we were able to grind all of Albion’s cane at the Rose Hall Factory.”
It was recently revealed in Parliament that the fire damage cost $600m and this has drawn consternation in some quarters.
Meanwhile, the sugar industry is estimated to have contracted by 60.4 per cent in the first half of this year, with production of 6,739 tonnes of sugar reported by GuySuCo and the projected annual production has been slashed from 100,000 tonnes to 70,000 tonnes.
This was reported in the Mid-Year Report released by the Ministry of Finance last week.
“This performance is attributed to the carried over impacts of drier-than-usual weather conditions last year into the second quarter of this year. As a result of the performance in the first half of the year, the growth projection for the sector is now 16.3 percent for 2024, with a revised projection of 70,000 tonnes of sugar to be produced this year,” the report said.
The continuing poor results in the sugar industry and high subventions to it, have put the government under pressure.
The report said that government interventions aimed at diversifying and modernising the sugar industry, while reducing the cost of production, continued in the first half of this year.
