The radical re-organisation of the sugar industry is a matter of urgency, Finance Minister Winston Jordan said on Monday, even as he stressed that the economy continued to feel the “drag of dismal output” by the sector.
“The continued postponement of the hard decisions on GuySuCo’s future would result in the corporation incurring even more debts (estimated currently at $80 billion) and an escalation of the demands on the Treasury,” he told the National Assembly during his three-hour-long 2017 budget presentation.
For 2017, he pointed out, the government has made an allocation of $9 billion to support the financing of GuySuCo’s operations. This brings to $32 billion the amount of resources that would have been provided to the Corporation since August 2015.
