NEW European Union Ambassador to Guyana, has chided former president Donald Ramotar for a letter he wrote which sought to blame the EU for some of the woes of the sugar industry and also taking offence of the bloc withholding a €25 million in budget support had he not prorogued parliament. Ambassador Jernej Videtic made the comments in a letter to the Editor of the Guyana Times in which he responded to Ramotar who had written one earlier on the issue.

Responding to the letter which was published by the Guyana Times, the EU Ambassador said “I note that in his letter of 20 October 2015 regarding Guyana’s sugar industry, former president Donald Ramotar claims that “the EU did not deliver the €25 million that we had earned and had an agreement on”.
The envoy said: “in fact, it was the previous government of Guyana that did not deliver on the terms of the agreement with the EU, by making little progress in public finance management reforms and by effectively suspending parliamentary oversight of the budget through the prorogation of the parliament.” Ambassador Videtic said, “it must be remembered that these funds are European citizen’s taxes, and we have a duty to carefully ensure all of our criteria are met before any funds can be released. The National Assembly is now sitting and parliamentary oversight is again in place, and we are working closely with the government to reestablish eligibility criteria to bring these budget support programmes back on track.”
The Ambassador also pointed out that Ramotar in his letter also implied that the sugar industry’s difficulties were caused “by the changed trading arrangement of the European Union”. “I would like to note that the EU sugar regime was changed not due to a unilateral decision by the EU, but due to a ruling by the World Trade Organisation. In order to mitigate the effects of this ruling the European Union has given over €110 million – that is 26 billion Guyanese dollars – to Guyana to restructure its sugar industry. The European Union has been a strong and reliable partner of Guyana for over forty years, and will continue to be in the future.”