-President Ali announces

MASSIVE investment plans are in the works to ‘upskill’ sugar workers as the government works to create a more competitive and profitable sugar production industry.

This was on Friday revealed by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, who was at the time speaking at the commissioning of a state-of-the art oil and gas training facility, just next door to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Training Centre in Port Mourant, Berbice (Region Six).

“We’re in the process of mechanising the sugar industry and modernising the sugar industry. The next couple of years of investment is critical in building a competitive and profitable sugarcane industry here in Guyana and I assured we’re going to build a competitive and profitable [one].”

In the 2024 fiscal package, $6 billion was set aside for GuySuCo to improve the future production and operational efficiency of the sugar industry.

President Ali noted that while this is being done, investments will be simultaneously made to advance the industry’s workforce.

“Important to this task is our human resource asset. This facility will have to be upgraded in keeping with what we want to achieve…we are going to invest in them to upskill their competency to transform them into skilled operators and workers …we want them to earn better, we want them to have a better life, a more honourable life a more dignified life. And we do so by investing in training, upskilling, retooling, and bringing them into the modernised frame of what the industry would look like,” the President posited.

Owing to critical investments, the sugar industry is estimated to have grown by 28 per cent in 2023. GuySuCo produced 60,204 tonnes in 2023, compared with 47,049 tonnes in 2022.

At the last general elections, the PPP/C government vowed to reopen the closed estates and upon assuming office, major investments were made to fulfil the manifesto pledge of rehiring workers and increasing sugar production.
Thousands of persons have since been rehired and, to date, according to recent statistics provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, over 8,000 persons are employed across the sugar belt.