Dear Editor,
I could not believe my eyes when I read in two of your daily editions last week that Guyana will be unable to benefit from a €6M ($1.6B) grant because of the late submission of the Sugar Action Plan to the European Commission (EC).

Imagine, the biggest foreign exchange earner for Guyana, the sugar industry, is in a terrible state and could well do with any form of injection it could get.

However, the administration drags its feet on the process which will guarantee that the industry and the country as a whole benefit from a sizeable cash injection from the EC.

At present GuySuCo is struggling to manufacture 200,000 tons of sugar yearly. It hopes with the Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project (SSMP) to achieve the landmark production figure of 500,000 tons of sugar a year. However, we all know that while Skeldon is up and running, it is not up to speed as yet. So that target might remain something of an illusion, at least until all the kinks are straightened out and the factory begins to operate at optimum efficiency. Therefore, any little help that the industry could get, the administration should move earth and heaven to ensure that it acquires. We all know that GuySuCo is staring at a series of progressive price cuts set by Europe and can ill afford to be losing money unnecessarily. So one must ask why Guyana took so long to present the action plan to the EC.

The EC would have clearly laid out all the criteria for eligibility to collect this grant. EC Ambassador in Guyana, Mr Geert Heikens, at his recent press conference stated that the date for the submission of the plan had been January 1, 2008, but an extension had been given until the end of March 2008. And still Guyana could not make it. You would believe that with all the hue and cry the administration made about the price cuts by Europe, that Guyana would have been first in line with the action plan.

What was the Ministry of Agriculture doing? What was the Board of Directors of GuySuCo doing? The Guyanese people demand an explanation. In this time of global financial crisis, we can ill afford to have more money going down the drain. The President must hold someone accountable for this embarrassing debacle. The Minister of Agriculture needs to answer serious questions as to why under his watch the Guyanese people are losing $1.6B. The money is not retrievable, so talk of it still being accessible is rubbish. I also believe that the EC was flexible enough to allow Guyana three extra months to submit their plan. Any more flexibility would mean complete anarchy, where submissions could be done whenever. That certainly will never happen in international business. We must learn that the rest of the world is in a constant state of motion. Nothing will wait on Guyana.

Once again I sound the call for an investigation into the late submission of this action plan that made the country lose out on $1.6B. The President must act decisively on this issue. Everyone is watching and waiting, even the sugar workers.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Francois