Official Misuse and Abuse of Guyana’s Economic Statistics part 1
Reputation Among economists, econometricians and statisticians who conduct serious research on the Caribbean and expend considerable effort mining the region’s economic datasets, Guyana has held the unsavory reputation for decades now, of being the country where political manipulation and Government misuse of official statistics are carried to their worst extreme. This requires them to be [...]
The Future of Sugar in Guyana: Part 2
Diversification in and out of Sugar This week I finish my examination of the sugar industry that I had started 20 weeks ago (May, 29, 2011). In last week’s column I had outlined a proposal to guide the transformation of GuySuCo from what is an intrinsically archaic centralized state-owned corporation producing mainly sugar into a [...]
The future of sugar in Guyana
Introduction The process of consolidating and centralizing capital and other productive assets in Guyana’s sugar industry reached its apogee with the establishment of GuySuCo in 1976. This brought under one umbrella two foreign-owned sugar companies (Bookers Sugar Estate (BSE) and Jessel Holdings) under state ownership. A relatively small (8 per cent) private cane farming sector [...]
GuySuCo: Caught in a cul-de-sac Contradiction
In last Sunday’s column I sought to portray what I termed as the fundamental economic illogic or contradiction which underlines GuySuCo operations. After that I proceeded to discuss one fundamental aspect of this illogic. That is the contradiction between the high and rising real costs of production at GuySuCo and its futile search for scale [...]
Unraveling GuySuCo’s economic illogic
While, as the saying goes, there is very little to be gained from crying over spilt milk, the fact of the matter is that the large income transfers made by the EU to Guyana (averaging over 8 per cent of Guyana’s GDP at its peak in the 1990s) when the Sugar Protocol was in force [...]
Making GuySuCo look ‘good’
Shifting the goalpost In most cases of deliberate political and intellectual deception or expediency, persons and organisations would, as the saying goes, seek to shift the goalpost during the debate, in order to defeat the opposing point of view. As we all know in such a circumstance the aim is to ensure that the goal [...]
Halt the ‘business as usual’ at GuySuCo
Introduction In an effort to encourage ACP countries to embrace the Sugar Protocol (SP) in the mid-1970s, European officials were at pains to stress that, when fixing the annual price for sugar, account would be taken to ensure a “reasonable rate of return for a reasonably efficient sugar enterprise, over the long run.” To be [...]
‘Prags‘ galore!
Introduction The gravamen of last week’s discussion of the technological developments pursued by Booker Tate and GuySuCo in the area of cane cultivation is that these were expected to proceed hand-in-hand with technological improvements in the factories. This complementarity, is of course, essential, if overall industry efficiency and a lower unit cost of producing sugar [...]
Privatize, mechanize: Rallying cries of GuySuCo reform Introduction
Last week’s column carried a schedule listing the key specifications for the new Skeldon factory. This included those technological developments which experts felt then were necessary to improve factory efficiency and lower unit cost of production. However, both factory and agricultural technological developments must go hand-in-hand, if there is to be overall efficiency, however measured [...]
Boondoggle: The Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project
Introduction The columns I have written so far on the sugar industry, starting on May 29, 2011 are intended to conclude with a broad appraisal of its prospects and suggestions for the way forward. From this perspective, the importance of the three preliminary considerations examined in last week’s column, cannot be over-emphasized. The Skeldon Sugar [...]
Skeldon sugar modernization: Far too long in the making
As planned, last week I completed the examination of GuySuCo’s key performance indicators. This examination is covered in my columns May 29-July 31. In last week’s column I also began to examine the Skeldon Sugar Modernization Project (SSMP), which I have already described as GuySuCo and the government’s principal response to the disastrous rot in [...]
Stopping the disastrous rot at GuySuCo
Necessary questions Today’s column begins with my response to two questions, which several readers have raised with me, privately. First, what lessons can be learnt from the information on GuySuCo’s overall performance indicator (tonnes sugar per hectare) provided in last week’s column? One key lesson is that compared to the performance as far back as [...]
GuySuCo: Performance indicators IV
Introduction In last week’s column I had presented time series information pertaining to GuySuCo’s factory performance for the two decades of the 1990s and 2000s. These data revealed that the factory conversion ratio for tonnes cane per tonne sugar, showed a definite improvement in performance, particularly when compared to the other indicator (tonnes cane per [...]
GuySuCo’s performance indicators III
In last week’s column I continued the discussion of GuySuCo’s performance indicators and also dealt with several other items related to the pattern of yields of sugar cane on GuySuCo’s estates. I should point out, as it is not generally appreciated that the Guyana Sugar Corporation Limited (GuySuCo), while incorporated in February 1976 “to cultivate [...]
GuySuCo’s performance indicators II
In last week’s column I had indicated that GuySuCo’s Report for 2009 stated that there was no payment of dividends for that year, as in many previous years. To my mind this statement reveals management’s resignation to the indefinite continuation of unprofitability. As the data in Table 1 and graph below show, while GuySuCo had [...]