The state of the country’s sugar industry is a microcosm of its weak agro processing sector, President of the National Agro Processors Association Ram Prashad has told Stabroek Business.
In an exclusive interview ahead of today’s national agro processing forum which opens this morning at the International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Prashad said that like many of the other sub-sectors in the manufacturing sector the product produced by GuySuCo does not benefit from its optimum worth as a value-added product.
And according to Prashad, it was not to the credit of the sugar industry that after several years it had been unable to realise a meaningful diversification into the global multi-billion dollar confectionery industry. “Guyana should have been one of the major candy-producing countries in the region. We have sugar and we have fruits. We can look at what is happening in the Philippines, for example. They are mixing sugar with tamarind and ginger and turning it into a major confectionery industry; what we call fruit candies.
“We sell raw sugar and there is not a lot of money to be made in raw sugar these days. We can complain and pass the buck as much as we want, the fact is that the industry is not viable and efficient. The sugar industry is hundreds of years old and nothing has been done to significantly upgrade it. We are doing the same thing time and again and yet we appear to be expecting a different result. If you have a car and you don’t maintain it, it will not work for you. This is what has been happening in the sugar industry. Same approach, same bad result. We need to upgrade our technology. We need to enhance our technology if the sugar industry is to survive.”
Prashad told Stabroek Business that the contemporary Guyana sugar industry had found itself in a condition of overwhelming inefficiency on account of the sustained application of production methods that were costly and inefficient. “I have seen sugar being made in India on the road side with a single tractor. The engine of the tractor turns the mill and the work force comprises four or five guys. Even though it is antiquated, it is efficient. There are no overheads, one tractor engine with four or five employees churn out sugar, our sugar industry. From what I have seen, whoever you put to run the sugar industry, if you do not address the real problems – and those problems have to do with much more than management – the industry will fail.”
Meanwhile Prashad told Stabroek Business that while Guyana possesses “the significant advantage” of a large agricultural sector, technology deficiencies and high energy costs had meant that the local agro processing sector was now well behind those in other Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries.
“The agro-processing sector in Guyana is nowhere near what it should have been. Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic and even Barbados are producing a lot of manufactured products which we do not have despite the fact that we have a stronger agricultural base. Most of our product is done in what is only processed to the intermediate stage so
that we have companies buying what
we call pepper mash or pulp instead of pepper sauce.”
Prashad, who is the proprietor of the Prestige Manufacturing and Bottling Company, said that Trinidad and Tobago, particularly, was “well ahead of the game in the agro-processing sector. The government there has opened up many doors and avenues in Caricom, for Trinidadians to acquire lands. Of course they also have the technology, the cheap energy and the labelling and packaging capacity to drive the sector. Interestingly, these are some of the very challenges affecting the sector here in Guyana.”
