Dear Editor,
Reading the news story in yesterday’s SN on Rawle Lucas’s testimony before the Parvatan Commission of Inquiry into the sugar industry, I note that Lucas is really calling for a shut-down and not a phase-out of the industry.
Shutting down the industry means we will have to start importing sugar. This is going to be a drain on our scarce foreign exchange resources. There are some estates that are more efficient than others, producing sugar at a lower unit cost. Let us keep these estates in business and continue to work on improving efficiency. This way we don’t have to import sugar for domestic consumption.
Let us lease out one-third of the sugar lands to Goya or some other multinational companies which would set up factories to process vegetables and fruits into tinned products for export. They would also provide employment for a good proportion of the retrenched sugar workers. Guyanese officials should have been actively talking with some of these companies over the last five years, ever since the EU served notice of ending the guaranteed quota and the prices associated with that.
Let us sell or lease one third of the lands to bona fide sugar workers to grow cash crops. In this case, government must assume responsibility for drainage and irrigation and also finding markets for the cash crops.
After a few years, the most successful of the three alternatives will take over the least efficient and expand and consolidate its operations.
What are the chances of finding and doing a deal with a multinational company? Government should give itself time to explore this option. An abrupt shut-down of the whole industry would invite a greater national disaster than we are currently facing.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
