-out of 14 submitted
Eleven companies yesterday submitted tenders for land preparation and planting at the Skeldon Sugar Estate in Berbice, however only four submitted all of the required documents.
The bids were yesterday opened at the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board and the respective companies and documents submitted are shown in the table below.
The tenders followed a September 10 compulsory meeting hosted by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) for companies interested in tendering for the project.
According to the public bid invitation, GuySuCo had stated that a compulsory meeting would be held at 10 am on September 10 at the Skeldon Estate, Corentyne, Berbice.
At the meeting, a senior GuySuCo official met with some five interested bidders. They had a discussion which lasted for about fifteen minutes.
Notably, several senior and well-known private cane farmers in the region were not present at the location on September 10.
In May, Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha announced that the replanting of cane had commenced at the Skeldon Estate and that the canes will be crushed at the Albion and Rose Hall factories.
At a meeting held at the Skeldon Estate then, Mustapha stated that they had started to mechanise 5,000 hectares of land at the Skeldon Estate with replanting of canes already started. “We are hoping that by the end of this year we can plant a substantial amount of canes in that 5,000 hectares and also the intention is to complete an additional 5,000 hectares from Skeldon that we will crush at Albion and Rose Hall factories that have the capacity to crush more canes,” he had said.
While this is being done they are working to improve the overall performance of the two factories, he added.
Noting the investments being made by the government to improve the sugar industry, Mustapha said they are hopeful that by the end of the year there will be 60 per cent mechanization of the industry. “We are purchasing new… harvesters. We are outsourcing planting because there is a problem with labour too and what we are doing we are trying to modernise the industry so that we can harvest and plant mechanically.”
It is unclear which companies are currently planting cane at Skeldon and whether it was as a result of a tendering process similar to the one on September 10th.
