— priority is to satisfy local market, flood-relief efforts

AS Guyana continues to face a national level two disaster in the form of unprecedented flooding, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has moved to suspend exportation of the country’s refined sugar.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GuySuCo Sasenarine Singh told the Guyana Chronicle on Friday that the ongoing floods have had a serious impact on local sugar production. He said that the move to halt international sales centred on the need to ensure that Guyanese consumers are adequately supplied with the product. “What we have done is… we have rediverted all of our available sugar in the bonds, to serve Guyana; primarily, our sugar is made in Guyana, for Guyanese, by Guyanese,” Singh related.

He said that while suspending sales on the international market is a normal occurrence, running out of sugar locally is atypical, and will be prevented from happening at all costs.
The CEO in an interview with this newspaper gave the assurance that in spite of the ongoing disaster, there is no shortage of sugar on the local market. “We are still delivering sugar; I just came from one of the bonds that was delivering and there were trucks there, collecting sugar just today,” Singh related.

He assured this newspaper that even with the shortfall of this year’s crop, the country will still be able to produce “more than enough” sugar to supply the local market for the remainder of 2021.
“The second crop is going to produce approximately 40,000 to 45,000 tonnes of sugar; for the remainder of the year, the local market just needs about 12, 000 to 15, 000 tonnes [of sugar],” Singh noted.

He said that in light of the ongoing floods, and the level of uncertainty that it has created for the next crop, efforts will be made to stockpile. “If we store 30,000 tonnes of sugar, it will be able to take us all the way to next year May,” Singh posited. Guyana consumes an average of 20,000 tonnes of sugar annually.
“We have more than enough sugar on the local market to provide for the consumers; there is no need to panic,” Singh emphasised.

FLOOD-RELIEF
The GuySuCo head said that the corporation is currently focusing on supplying packaged sugar to the Guyana Civil Defence Commission [CDC] to support the ongoing national flood-relief efforts. “Right now, we are packaging sugar at Enmore [East Coast Demerara]” Singh said.
He added: “Priority number one is to ensure that the CDC has enough sugar to go into the hampers for people worse affected in places such as Kwakwani, Black Bush Polder, Albion and all the other areas that are badly, badly affected; Region Seven and so forth.”

REOPENING
He said that so far, the severely flooded Albion Sugar Estate will put a damper on the country’s sugar production over the next few months. More specifically, GuySuCo is projecting a total “wipe-out” of the estate’s first crop for 2022.

Notwithstanding this, the sugar estates at Blairmont, West Coast Berbice and Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara, are preparing to restart production on July 15 and July 24, respectively; production at the Albion, East Berbice- Corentyne has been delayed until August. “Whether mid-August or late-August is subject to the weather,” Singh explained.

Even with the rain, Singh said that the work at GuySuCo has not stopped. “If the rain doesn’t stop, we can’t restart, but [in the meantime] our factory repairs are ongoing,” he noted. Singh estimates that these repairs would be completed before the end of July, in time for the restarting of the Blairmont and Uitvlugt estates.