THE government has established a States Land Sales Committee which will ensure transparency in the sale of Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) estates land pending privatisation.

The sale of lands is expected to commence very soon, according to Director- General of the Ministry of the Presidency, Joseph Harmon.

“Under the guidance of His Excellency, the President, we’ve had to establish a States Land Sales Committee that will ensure that there is transparency in the disposing of these assets because, in our modern history, this will be the largest transfer of assets by the State to the private sector,” Harmon said.

“So, it is important that we ensure all of the processes are transparent; that they’re open and, therefore, there can’t be claims that this person got something at one price and the other person got something at another price,” he said.

In recent years, the government has moved to downsize the sugar industry to make GuySuCo, which had amassed billions in debt, more efficient.

Some estates and factories were amalgamated and others were divested.
Earlier in the year, a report on GuySuCo estates was handed over to the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited’s (NICIL) Steering Committee.

The documents were compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consultant firm hired by NICIL’s Special Purpose Unit (SPU) to oversee the privatisation of the Rose Hall, Enmore and Skeldon estates.

PwC also commenced the process of valuation of GuySuCo assets in January 2019 which it has since completed.

Harmon noted that the process has been an extensive but careful one.
“It took quite a while because they [the assets] were not individually or separately transported,” he explained, adding: “There had to be an exceptional amount of time taken to have surveys done and then to put valuation on the individual assets [which are] the lands, the buildings and the equipment that are on these estates.”

Earlier this year, cash-strapped GuySuCo had to lay off some 4,000 workers in order to keep the sugar industry viable.

Since the government’s announcement of its plans to privatise the estates, several investors have shown interest.

Harmon stated that these investors are in the process of being re-contacted for a continuation in the plans for investment.

“While this [valuation] was going on, you had interest by several companies and because it took a little while, some of those interests would have waned and so we have now to re-establish contact with some of the parties who had expressed an interest in the first place. So that is going on and I can say to you that that is a very active issue right now,” he stated.

The director-general also said that the sale of lands that are not going to remain a part of the new GuySuCo will commence soon.