At the dawn of A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) taking office in May 2015, Guyana’s sugar industry was the first target of cruel pronouncements under the guise of have to make hard necessary decisions.
Many of the decisions on the future of the industry were done without thought for the ordinary sugar workers whose lives would be directly affected, many of whom would not be able to provide for their families. In its tenure in office – four years legitimately and one year of hanging on to power after the No Confidence Motion was passed – the APNU/AFC has destroyed the lives of thousands of sugar workers, those of their families, and the lives of those who directly depend of business from these workers.
All of this was done without any fact-based approach, which including a socio-economic impact study that was recommended by a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) set up by the very APNU/AFC Administration. To compound all that has occurred over the past five years, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) is now saying that it has run out of cash to meet basic expenditure such salaries, maintenance, and bare essentials.
It comes as no surprise that, again, the unsympathetic approach by the APNU/AFC has been unleashed and the sugar industry has been left out in the cold. Caretaker Finance Minister Winston Jordan slapped sugar workers and the sugar industry as a whole in their faces when he said on Wednesday that there is no money in the treasury to help bail them out.
Given the wanton spending and lack of visionary projects over the past five years, Jordan’s response was almost predictable. The Bank of Guyana’s record, as reported by this newspaper, shows how bankrupted the APNU/AFC has left Guyana. According to the BoG gazetted Statement of Assets and Liabilities, the country’s general reserves have been depleted to $0 and the account is also now running an overdraft to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
This is in addition to an alarmingly depleted gold reserve. As illustrated in the May 23, 2020 publication of the Official Gazette, the General Reserve is -$290,667, 332. It also shows Public Deposits have been depleted to below $0, also recording a negative balance of -$88,629, 401,855. Guyana’s Contingency Reserve account also reflects an alarmingly low amount of $2.3 billion.
In contrast, when APNU/AFC took office in May 2015, the Bank of Guyana’s Statement of Assets and Liabilities reflected gold reserves were stocked at $15 billion. The latest figures show that the gold reserves have been depleted by the APNU/AFC Administration to less $1 billion — now standing at $715 million.
This reflects a difference of $14.3 billion spent by the sitting Administration during its time in office, not accounting for the additional sales of gold that would have cycled through the financial system over the course of the five years in office. In 2015, Guyana’s General Reserve had in its coffers just about $6 billion, while the Contingency reserve held $4 billion. Today, those savings have been eroded to below zero dollars, to now reflect considerable overdrafts.
The General Reserves now stand at minus $291 million, while the Public Deposits now account for an $89 billion red mark or overdraft against the country. While the Contingency reserve stood at $4.8 billion when the APNU/AFC coalition took office, the current accounts reflect a balance of just about 2.3 billion. This state of affairs of our economic standing is dumfounding.
Under the APNU/AFC Administration, sugar workers have not only been plunged into poverty, but have been humiliated in the process, as their dignity was stripped as thousands were suddenly made incapable of providing for their families.
Given the state of our financial standing, it is obvious that APNU/AFC cannot offer any relief mechanism to the additional thousands of workers who are now on the breadline.
We support the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union’s statement on Wednesday that the Granger-led regime has turned its back on the sugar belt and, from all appearances, is prepared to drive a large section of Guyanese into poverty. What a shameful mess made by the APNU/AFC in a mere five years. It will now be up to the new Irfaan Ali- led Administration to take up the tedious task of having to revive the industry which was destroyed, demolished and shattered by the APNU/AFC.
