Dear Editor,
I have a brother inside GuySuCo and because of fear, he cannot write. So, I will write for him. GuySuCo held its most important Board of Directors Meeting for 2025 yesterday (February 19, 2025) with a clear aim of attempting to start the crop. Unfortunately, the rains are here and thus as happened in 2024, the crop will now begin in week 9 of the year (which now means somewhere around March 1, 2025).
This is not good news for the industry since over 210,000 metric tonnes (MT) of cane from 2024, could not be harvested as a result of poor field management (I was advised that the Agriculture Director has now been fired). But what is unfortunate is that these canes are now 68-70 weeks old. The cane varieties we have in Guyana take between 42-52 weeks to be at their optimum harvesting potential.
Once 52 weeks pass, and the sugar cane starts to get older than its optimum prime period and is still left standing in the field, several negative changes occur that impact the yield and quality of the sugar produced including the rapid conversion of the sucrose (the sugar we want) by way of an inversion process. This situation leads to a huskier cane with more bagasse content and less sugar content which leads to reduced recoverability in the factory.
The common sense explanation is – GuySuCo will be harvesting canes that will be more suitable to burn in the fire as fuel rather than to extract sugar. These so-called experts by way of the past Agriculture Director and past Technical Director must be held responsible for this mess. I am told by the staff that they turned up at the estates and told the sugar professionals that they allegedly came with the mandate from the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Zulifikar Mustapha, and the Chairman of the Board, Mr. Madanlal Ramraj, and thus everyone allowed them to do what they wanted to do.
I am told that the Chairman of the Board and the Minister are allegedly lobbying hard for the former Agriculture Director, Mr. Vishnu Panday, to be the new CEO of the Skeldon Sugar Estate which is another major financial plunder in the making; thus, the assignment of $13 billion to GuySuCo by the Central Government; in an election year. I am told the word on the ground is that a very senior Board Member told a manager in confidence, that this is the time for him to make the last pull since he does not know if the next government will be a minority one and thus they will have to be accountable for the funds.
At this Board Meeting, the CEO and the Board are continuing to press forward with the Skeldon Project which is expected to consume more than $2 billion before elections with no factory. What a monstrous mess! Then you have the CEO, Mr. Paul Cheong on cloud nine preaching that the industry is seeking cost-savings and efficiencies to produce sugar at a lower cost. But to date, he has not shed one bit of light on how to bring this about.
Now I want to alert the public to the most important part – production (see table above). The Hon. Minister in his Budget statement asserted that GuySuCo will be making 100,000 MT of sugar when he was fully well briefed by the Estate Managers that they can only do at best with a favourable condition of 70,000 MT. However, from internal documents shared with me, the Managers are more aligned to the production of 56,000 MT with a detailed breakdown week by week of the production in 2025 as compared to the actual performance in 2024.
What is more concerning is that the statistics produced internally stand to scrutiny since from the table below the average actual weekly production for the 1st Crop of 2024 was 749 MT per week and that is expected to improve by 44% in 2025 under the condition that there are more canes on the ground (albeit some 200,000 MT of it is very old cane way past its best life). Similarly, the production in the 2nd Crop of 2025 is expected to surpass the 2024 performance by 13%.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Emily Lorrimer.
