Guyana’s sugar industry on road to recovery

TIMES INT'L

The sugar industry in Guyana is at present showing remarkable signs of revival as more estates are meeting their targets and workers are getting extra days’ pay. This was confirmed by President Donald Ramotar, who visited the Albion estate on Monday.
Operations at the Skeldon factory, which has come in for flak in recent months, has improved considerably and the Head of State expressed the hope that by the end of the year, the problems that the factory suffered at the hands of Booker Tate (the firm that was initially contracted to manage the estate), should be rectified.
He also explained that the weather conditions experienced over the past months prevented a lot crop husbandry and practices at the various estates; however, now that the weather patterns have changed the industry is poised to address these issues and improve the entire cropping cycle as a whole this year.
“At present, the price of sugar on the international market is very good and we have to work to ensure that the industry is at its most efficient level; while we continue the whole process of mechanisation and modernisation so as to further develop the industry,” the President said.
With regards to the Enmore Packaging Plant, which is another issue that has attracted a lot of attention recently, particularly in the media, he confirmed that this facility has been operational and is performing well.
The US$12.5M facility is a significant component of the industry’s modernisation plan that will ultimately see packaged sugar output expand to 80,000 tonnes.
So far for this crop, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) realised a production of more than 52,000 tonnes of sugar and it is hoping to exceed 160,000 tonnes which will make it a very successful crop.

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