– PSC Chair, Nicholas Boyer

By Navendra Seoraj
REVITALISING the ailing sugar industry is a challenging task but the new People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government plans on making it a reality, even if it means partnering with the private sector.

In 2017, the APNU+AFC Coalition Government had announced the closure of several sugar estates across the country, leaving thousands of persons without a job or source of income. The move saw four sugar estates being closed and 7,000 sugar workers losing their jobs.
The new government plans to re-open those shuttered estates and simultaneously rejuvenate the industry through ‘innovation’ and ‘prudent’ management and interventions which could also come from the private sector.

“We alone as a government cannot do it and that is why we are looking at the private sector to help sustain sugar,” Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, told Stabroek News.

Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Nicholas Boyer, in an invited comment on Monday, told the Guyana Chronicle that the private sector is always open to “public/private partnerships.”

“We remain open to working with the minister (Minister of Agriculture)… The private sector is very open to public/private partnership and we want to see the country and sector develop,” said Boyer.

The chairman said the private sector will watch how things “play out” but its main hope is that Guyana will maintain a diversified economy even with the advent of oil and gas and the renewed focus on sugar.

“We hope to make sure that agriculture is a priority and we will work with the minister of agriculture,” said Boyer.
He told this publication that the PSC will be meeting soon with Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, to discuss areas of partnership and other critical issues such as the revitalisation of the sugar industry.

It was reported that the Rose Hall Estate will be the first of the three estates to be re-opened and is expected to begin grinding in 2022.
Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Sasenarine Singh, had said a full business plan for the industry is being crafted, and is expected to be presented to the corporation’s board of directors in October.

Once the business plan is completed, the corporation will start implementing aspects of it ‘minutely’.
“I think the challenge in dealing with a complex situation like what we found at GuySuCo is, there are many plans, there are many feasibility studies, but where they failed all the time was at the point of implementation so that is where I’m going to pay very focused attention.

“I want to make sure that the implementation is done because it is driving two factors: one is we want to push the revenue proposition up the ladder to be selling at the right price point and the right kind of products, not selling raw sugar but mostly selling things like packaged sugar and bag sugar and hopefully in the medium term going into a refinery,” said Singh.

The other thing he plans to focus on is the entire value chain within GuySuCo and to establish where the non-value-added activities are then weed them out. Singh believes that he will accomplish this even with the three estates which were closed by the past administration.