-makes $6B provision in Budget 2014

GOVERNMENT’S commitment to the sugar industry has never been in doubt; and while there have been those who believe that the industry is dead, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic Government has remained firm that the industry will recover and play its role in Guyana’s future of sustainable and accelerated growth and development.
This unswerving pledge by Government has manifested itself throughout the years in tangible support, and 2014 is no exception. Budget 2014 provides for the advancement of $6B to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo,) to help the industry reverse its fortune and to preserve the jobs of the industry’s 18,000 workers. The provision will in addition redound to the benefit of an additional 120,000 people directly and indirectly, Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh pointed out during his Budget presentation on Monday.
In 2013, an amount of $1B was transferred by government to GuySuCo to assist the company in meeting employment and other overhead costs, and the financing requirements of a transformation plan which includes the implementation a critical three-year (2013-2016) Strategic Plan. The previous year, 2012, a provision of $4B was made to GuySuCo.
Over the years, Government’s support to the industry would have seen the injection of over $40 B for the shoring up of its operations.
The fact is-the once thriving sugar industry that was the backbone of Guyana’s growth in the early years of Guyana’s independence, was not the industry that the PPP/C Government inherited in 1992. It inherited a dying industry, a broken one in which every aspect, from fields to factories, was in a dismal, dilapidated and neglected state.
New circumstances, such as global weather, dwindling labour pool, more expensive equipment and the termination of the European Union sugar quota guaranteeing favourable prices to the industry further exacerbated the problems in the industry.
In many countries, these very issues led to the killing of many sugar industries, including, in CARICOM, in St Kitts, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. In other countries, like Jamaica, and Cuba, the governments chose to down-size their industries. The Government of Guyana however, instead of lamenting the changing circumstances and being overwhelmed, chose to help support the industry to rebound, and to this end has been making annual budgetary allocations to help support interventions to move the industry into the 21st century, to boldly embrace its challenges and seize opportunities.
Government’s focus has been on the mechanisation of the industry and rehabilitation and maintenance of the factories and fields. The expansion and the modernisation of Skeldon Factory is a flagship initiative in this regard. Also included is the billions expended on state-of-the-art equipment to improve value-added products at Blairmont and the Enmore Packaging Plant.
The road to the industry’s recovery has not been without setbacks. However, government has remained committed and has ended all efforts to privatise the industry and continues to ignore calls to shut it down.
These include a recent call by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), which was later supported by the Alliance For Change, to shut down the industry. APNU’s careless disregard for the industry and its workers however is nothing new and dates back to the 1980s, when, as the then People’s National Congress, they moved towards the privatisation of the industry.
Because of government’s support, sugar has survived and is showing remarkable signs of recovery, as more estates are meeting their targets and workers are getting extra days pay.
During his Budget presentation, Minister Singh noted that the emergence of a revitalised sugar industry is anticipated, with the soon-to-be-appointed new board of directors and senior management at GuySuCo, and the injection of more innovative thinking into both the strategic and operational challenges that continue to beset the industry, and a more harmonised industrial climate.
The sugar industry is projected to record an improvement of 15.6 percent in output to 215,910 tonnes in 2014.
Budget 2014 was presented under the theme “By All Guyanese, a Better Guyana, for all Guyanese.”

(GINA)