Failed promises

The 2018 Budget offers an opportunity not only to evaluate the Government’s plans for next year, but signals of its longer-term goals. We can do worse than begin with the sugar industry, which for so long had been the mainstay of the economy, but all the stakeholders concede far-reaching changes had become necessary subsequent to the unilateral jettisoning of the “preferential prices” by Europe a decade ago, reducing them by 36 per cent.
The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government, then in office, attempted to reduce the cost of production of sugar which had been historically high in comparison with the major producing and exporting nations such as Brazil. The Skeldon Modernisation project was the centrepiece of that plan, but, unfortunately, the ultramodern factory never delivered on its promise and added rather than reduced the burgeoning production costs.
The new A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government appointed a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) to chart a way forward for the industry, but the Government rejected the major recommendation that the Government, as owner of GuySuCo, inject funds into the latter and bring it to a point of sale in three years. Rather, the Government unilaterally closed Wales Estate at the end of 2016 and announced farmers’ cane would be processed at Uitvlugt Estate. By the middle of this year, the Government laid a “State Paper on the Future of Sugar” in the National Assembly.
The paper altered the CoI’s recommendation to claim privatisation should be “within three years” rather than “after three years”. It elaborated, “The proposed courses of action are to amalgamate Wales Estate with Uitvlugt Estate and reassign its cane to the Uitvlugt factory, since the estate is operating at 50 per cent capacity. Sixty per cent of its drainage and irrigation infrastructure is in a dilapidated condition. The Corporation furthermore seeks to divest itself of the Skeldon Estate. The estates of Albion and Rose Hall are to be amalgamated and the factory at Rose Hall is to be closed.
“GuySuCo would then consist of three estates and three sugar factories. The estates would be Blairmont in the West Bank Berbice, Albion-Rose Hall in East Berbice and the Uitvlugt-Wales Estate in West Demerara. The three estates will be complete with factories and will have cane supplied from all five locations.”
The Paper spoke of the closure of Wales in the future tense even though the deed had already been done. The closure of Enmore Estate – factory and fields – was mentioned as an afterthought. The question which did not seem to occupy the minds of those in charge of the radical downsizing of GuySuCo was what would be the fate of the sugar workers who would be out of a job after they received their “severance pay”? There was early talk of the reactivation of the “Other Crops Division” representing the move towards diversification from sugar back in the 1970s. At Wales, however, which was supposed to be the model for the subsequent closures, all that was done was to cultivate 400 acres of “seed paddy” for rice, which delivered an abysmal yield.
The “Future of Sugar” plan had claimed: “GuySuCo also proposes to surrender land for lease to employees for them to engage in agricultural production. The resources that exist under the “Green economy” and “Regional Food Self-Sufficiency” drive would support their efforts.” Since nothing had been done in this regard in the year since the closure of Wales, sugar workers in both Demerara and Berbice looked anxiously at the 2018 Budget for funds allocated towards this end. There was nothing.
And it is because of this failed promise that these workers can only conclude they are being buried by the present Administration, even as it keeps harping on developing Guyana’s agricultural resources to take a chunk of the US$4.3 billion Caribbean food bill. The Government instead has targeted the intermediate and interior savannahs for agricultural development. Will they allow the drained and irrigated ex-sugar lands to revert to “bush”? Why can cane-cutters not be transitioned into cash-crop farmers?