Come Saturday, the ceremonial commissioning of the Skeldon Sugar Complex and Co-generation Facility is likely to be the most significant tryst with the destiny of Guyana’s sugar industry so far conceived.

Indeed, to a large extent, by the earning of foreign exchange and moving into value-added products with spin-off industries, Skeldon can be pivotal to the future of Guyana’s vital agricultural sector, which remains a major source of employment and foreign exchange earnings. 

Many of the next generation inhabiting coastal Guyana may well look back at Saturday’s event as a decisive moment, for much more than the 17, 000 workers directly employed by GUYSUCO, and be aware that it is the industry that contributes some US$120 million annually, earned from exports of raw sugar to Europe.

Plus, of course, the range of health care and recreation facilities made available to hundreds of rural communities throughout the country.

But to complete the industry’s contribution to Guyana’s economy, one must also add about 4,000 temporary workers, at least 3,000 cane farmers and approximately 20,000 Guyanese of all walks of life who are indirectly linked with the sugar industry, providing various services for and sharing the benefits including spin-off effects in training in trades, technical research skills, and the highly demanding business of sugar cultivation, processing, shipping and export for refining. 

The Skeldon flagship
Such factors, as stated above, make it all the more essential that the Skeldon Complex become the flagship of a modernised, highly efficient sugar industry of the Caribbean, aiming to produce 320, 000 tonnes of raw sugar by 2012.

This was the goal clearly identified in the Sugar Modernisation Programme, as designed in 1998 in anticipation of developments likely to affect Guyana’s preferential exports, as a consequence of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, plus pressures from the World Trade Organisation on the traditional colonial suppliers of raw material for British and other European industries. 

There is no gainsaying that Guyana’s vision in 1998 for a NEW sugar industry was deserving of much praise. But today, given the low production in 2007 and 2008 of merely 226, 482 and 226, 268 tonnes respectively, as disclosed by Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, it is difficult not to concede that immense challenges lie ahead for the industry over the next few years.

Management   
The challenges include demonstration of a capacity for tough and sound business thinking, and a no-nonsense management approach. This could best be enabled with clear policy guidelines, and a Board capable of revealing a sustained interest in the industry’s overall performance, consistent with changes at home and abroad.

It is an enormous challenge for the industry to have a total production increase by some 90, 000 tonnes in three short years. This means that it simply cannot be “business as usual” in policy initiatives and management responsibilities. Critical assessments must be made to ensure the highest possible performance and total rejection of nepotism, inefficiencies, and corrupt practices.

It was encouraging to learn of the ‘management shake-up’, and the appointment of a new Board. But among questions deserving of an informed response is whether there has been a comprehensive assessment of the high-costing management contract that was available to Booker-Tate while the industry was declining?

If such an assessment was carried out, then what pitfalls are to be avoided based on the findings? It seems inadequate to simply make reference to the end of the management contract that was awarded to Booker-Tate.

According to what’s being said in some circles, the measures being pursued to achieve a positive ‘turn-around’ in the sugar industry include:

Acceleration and expansion of cane cultivation; ensuring equipment is in proper working order and available in a timely and required manner; contracting out for services; and the design of fields for mechanical harvesting. 

The major task, of course, remains the delivery capacity to supply of the 1.2 million tonnes of cane for the Skeldon Factory to operate on an economically viable basis. This challenge cannot be met without a sufficiently attractive incentive programme to enable the formation of a sizeable cane farming body, or organisation, prepared to perform on sound business principles.

So much of Guyanese future is tied up with the future of sugar. Let it be a sweet experience.