THE ailing sugar industry continues to receive bad projections as Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma, hinted that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) will need an estimated sum of $4.5 billion soon in order to survive.
Sharma made the disclosure in response to Opposition Chief Whip, Gail Teixeira, who spoke about the sugar industry on behalf of Leader of the Opposition, Bharat Jagdeo, on the final day of the two-day Business Summit on Thursday.
Teixeira spoke in defense of the thousands of sugar workers who are out of work because of the closure of the Wales Estate and those who will be out of work when Albion and the East Demerara Estates grind to a close at year- end.
In addition, the Skeldon Estate has been at the helm of talks about privatisation for the past few months.

“8,000 private sector workers lost their jobs so far for this year and the closure of the estates will add approximately 10,000 workers to the list of those (who) are unemployed this year,” said the Opposition Chief Whip.

The minister nonetheless said GuySuCo in its current state is posing a number of challenges to the Government. Since the APNU+AFC coalition was elected to office in 2015, they have poured some $32 billion into GuySuCo to keep it afloat.
In April 2017, Cabinet had approved $1 billion to bailout the corporation and which recently received $2 billion from the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) for the sale of land.
According to Sharma, although GuySuCo received so much revenue, it will be exhausted by the end of October. To avoid constant spending, restructuring of the industry is needed, he said.
“GuySuCo restructuring is based on the sales of land but they owe GRA about $5 billion in tax; so that is another issue they have to deal with because even after they sell the land to CH&PA, they have to pay the tax in order to get the compliance from GRA,” lamented the minister.

Considering the state of the sugar industry, members of the Private Sector suggested that the industry be privatised.
Head of the Agricultural sub-committee of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Rajindra Persaud called for the industry to be privatised during his presentation on the first day of the summit.
Persaud said the industry, despite being one of the main export earners in the past, has declined over the past decade and once it is privatised, investors will find innovative ways to make it viable. Many participants were in support of his call.

In May, Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder, had said the estates that would remain are Blairmont on the West Bank of Berbice, Albion-Rose Hall in East Berbice and the Uitvlugt-Wales Estate in West Demerara.
The three estates will be complete with factories and will have cane supplied from all five locations. By virtue of the amalgamation, the Enmore, East Coast Demerara (ECD) and Rose Hall, Berbice factories will be closed by year-end.
In the case of Enmore, that factory will be closed at the end of the year when all canes would have been harvested and the East Coast estates would be earmarked for diversification.