Over the last five years, and particularly since assuming office, the PPP/C Administration has constantly exposed the extent to which the coalition administration destroyed the sugar sector. But the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh recently added another dimension to the industrial horror story as he revealed his discovery that the APNU+AFC faction had allowed $43B of field assets to be destroyed.
During a recent online interview, Singh said GuySuCo is working tirelessly to bring its accounts in line so that it can be responsible and more accountable to its shareholders. As he perused some of the financial records to gain a deeper understanding of the entity’s fiscal health, Singh said what he discovered could only be described as a case of “financial murder” in the sugar industry.
The GuySuCo CEO said, “…At the end of 2016 there was $62B worth of field and machinery plant equipment at GuySuCo and in 2019 it was $19B. You want to talk about economic genocide? It has happened in sugar and I would call it financial murder because there was a lack of investment in repairing, replacing and adding to the infrastructure pool, new machinery.”
He added, “So you have to give credit to this government which is looking to address this to ensure 8000 families have a future. They destroyed $43B in real assets; it is economic genocide that happened in this country…”
Guyana Standard previously reported that $6B via the 2022 budget has been allocated to GuySuCo for the revival of the sugar industry.
Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, during the budget 2022 debates, said that no effort will be spared to protect and preserve the sugar industry, which directly supports 8,400 families.
Minister Mustapha noted that the $6 billion budgeted in 2022 for GuySuCo will be prudently used to revolutionise field and factory operations.
The priority areas are: Mechanisation of Albion’s field operation, Investment in new packaging plant at Albion, expansion of the Blairmont Packaging Plant, and critical rehabilitation of Uitvlugt Factory
In 2022, government also plans to rehabilitate the estate transportation routes that were damaged by the 2021 floods, accelerate the mechanisation in agricultural operations at Rose Hall and Albion and commence a feasibility study at Uitvlugt, to explore if ethanol could be commercially produced there.
Government also plans to ensure 64 percent of sales of the sugar company will come from value-added packaged sugar. This will be achieved when investments are made to expand the Blairmont packaging plant.
Government also plans to consider the possibility of engaging private investor interest in some of the estates.
The PNC deliberately destroyed this industry because the employees are primarily East Indians.
If sugar prices were low, then they could have looked into production of ethanol, use bagasse as fuel, etc.
But it is too much for these idiots to come up with any ideas, however poor the ideas are.