Dear Editor,
The Stabroek News letter published on May 8, 2025, criticising GuySuCo’s performance and blaming the current PPP/C administration for the state of the sugar industry, represents a blend of selective memory, economic misrepresentation, and political deflection.
While it is fair to demand accountability for GuySuCo’s current output, the letter omits critical facts and context, leading to a misleading and politically convenient narrative.
The writer celebrates sugar production under the APNU+AFC government (2016–2020) without acknowledging that this period witnessed a steep and sustained decline in output: there was a 51.5% drop in production from 2016 to 2020 alone, predating any intervention by the PPP/C. If production alone is the benchmark for success, APNU+AFC presided over one of GuySuCo’s worst five-year collapses in history.
The closure of the Wales (2016), East Demerara (2017), Skeldon (2017), and Rose Hall (2017) estates under APNU+AFC was more than just a “reorganisation.” It resulted in the retrenchment of approximately 7,000 workers, widespread rural economic distress, and the elimination of nearly 50% of GuySuCo’s production capacity.
Despite receiving $30B in a syndicated bond in 2018, GuySuCo under APNU+AFC failed to meaningfully restructure operations or create new revenue streams from the remaining estates.
The PPP/C administration, elected in August 2020, made a strategic policy decision to resuscitate the sugar industry, recognizing its importance as a social and economic stabilizer in rural Guyana. This included:
• Reopening the Rose Hall estate.
• Restarting capital investments in Uitvlugt, Blairmont, and Albion.
• Rehiring skilled workers and retraining technical staff.
• Rehabilitating thousands of hectares of neglected cane fields.
Replanting alone requires 12–18 months before canes become harvestable. Rebuilding broken drainage infrastructure and rehabilitating factories takes years, not months. It is disingenuous to suggest that the effects of estate closures can be reversed within three to four crop cycles.
The letter scoffs at the 15,000 tonnes recorded so far in the 2025 first crop, yet fails to account for real-world production inhibitors:
• Climate: Droughts in early 2024 followed by La Niña-induced rainfall in late 2024/early 2025 severely disrupted planting and harvesting cycles.
• Labour shortages: Many experienced sugar workers were lost during 2016–2020 and have not returned. The training pipeline was broken.
• Mechanical failure: Mills and factories went years without proper maintenance under APNU+AFC, contributing to ongoing technical failures.
• The letter cites GuySuCo’s revenue advantage under APNU+AFC without noting that:
• Production was declining year-over-year despite relatively high global sugar prices during 2016–2018.
• The corporation’s cost of production per tonne of sugar remained unsustainably high – US$700–US$800 per tonne in some years – rendering exports unprofitable.
• Over $30B in public debt was accrued via syndicated loans, with no tangible diversification or modernization outcomes.
The PPP/C administration, in contrast, has focused on gradually reducing unit costs, exploring cogeneration and value-added products (e.g., molasses and packaged sugar), and pursuing regional market integration under the CSME sugar protocol.
The writer touts initiatives like “Sugar Tourism” and producing white sugar as lost opportunities. In truth:
• The “Sugar Tourism Strategy” was a conceptual document without budget, investment, or feasibility study.
• GuySuCo had no functioning infrastructure to produce white sugar at scale. Conversion of a brown sugar plant to white requires US$30M–US$50M and a reliable high-grade input source.
No capital was allocated for either initiative under APNU+AFC budgets between 2017 and 2020. These ideas were shelved within months of being announced.
The critique of CEO Paul Chung based solely on production numbers ignores the fact that he inherited a fractured and stripped-down organization. Comparing him to past managers without acknowledging the drastically reduced estate footprint and degraded factory conditions is unfair and lacks objectivity.
The management under APNU+AFC failed to stop declining production despite being in full control of a still-functional industry in 2016. That decline had nothing to do with pandemic disruptions or whether it was a result of systemic mismanagement, short-term thinking, and refusal to adapt.
The sugar industry was not thriving under APNU+AFC it was being dismantled. Their decisions created a production and credibility crisis that the PPP/C is now trying to reverse. The process is slow, fraught with legacy issues, and often unpopular but it is rooted in restoration, not liquidation.
Accountability must continue, but it should be informed by facts, not fantasy. Guyana’s sugar industry needs truth, investment, and innovation not political revisionism dressed as concern.
References:
• GuySuCo Annual Reports, 2016–2020.
• GAWU Press Releases, 2017–2018; Stabroek News Archives.
• “GuySuCo Fails to Explain Use of $30B Bond,” Kaieteur News, Nov 2019.
• “Agricultural Replanting Timelines,” FAO Technical Manual (2020).
• Hydromet Office Reports, Jan–Apr 2024; Guyana Chronicle.
• NICIL-GuySuCo Audit Report, 2021.
• World Bank Commodity Price Data, Sugar (2016–2020).
• GRA Production Cost Briefs, 2017–2019.
• Ministry of Finance Bond Oversight Report, 2020.
• “Feasibility Study: White Sugar Conversion in Caribbean Mills,” IICA/FAO (2019).
Sincerely,
Kimberly A Dowridge