– new Board to be announced shortly

THE Guyana Sugar Corporation’s (GuySuCo) former Director of Agricultural Services, Dr. Harold Davis Jnr has been appointed the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced Monday.

Speaking at a media briefing, Harmon said his appointment took effect last week. Added to that, the Minister of State said the board of directors for the sugar company is to be announced before the end of next week.

“The consideration for the board for the entity is well advanced, and I believe that by the end of this week or very early in the new week, we will have the announcement of a board of directors for GUYSCUO.”

Touching on the divestment of estates, Harmon reminded reporters that the four estates –Skeldon, Rose Hall, Enmore and Wales — which were all closed by the government are up for divestment. Harmon admitted that the divestment process is taking some time, but noted that “because there is a requirement for us to have careful assessment of the value of these assets and the fact that the estates were never independent entities by themselves they will require a separation of them.”

The minister told reporters that every estate needs to be demarcated, as the entities were never separate and that process is taking some time. He said, too, that PriceWaterhouseCooper is still in the process of valuing the estates and adjoining assets.
“What you’re talking about now is deciding what Skeldon is? What is Enmore? Each of the estates has to have a demarcation of what are the assets there,” he said, adding:
“PriceWaterhouseCooper is the company that was retained to do the evaluation of these assets; they have done a tremendous amount of work and my understanding is that by the end of September they will conclude their evaluation of those assets.”

In the meantime, based on work done, several advertisements have been placed in the newspapers calling for Expressions of Interest (EoI).
“

There have been very, very exciting expressions of interest not only for the four estates that have been up for divestment. We are having proposals down for the entire industry including the three estates that remain in GUYSUCO, so there is a lot of interest out there and we want to make sure we take our time to get these things right,” Harmon asserted.
Moreover, he reminded that with divestment there will be the transfer of significant land sales from the state to the private sector. As a result, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that that process is done transparently and with consultations with persons who are likely to be affected.

There will be consultations with persons likely to affected, he noted while pointing to cases where persons living in Corriverton, Berbice on lands provided through the GuySuCo Welfare Fund but are not in possession of titles.

It is because of such issues, the government believes that it needs to act carefully so as not to jeopardise the welfare of any citizen.

“You cannot be too careful when dealing with land. I trust the persons who are purchasing the assets of the estate understand that we need to be very careful because we are not just dealing with land simplicita but land on which human being live and on which economic activity was taking place and so we have to be very careful,” Harmon concluded.