Dear Editor,
Over the last several years, I have written many times, asking about the $30B that NICIL/SPU took as a loan for GuySuCo. The new Government is now going to find out, but until now, David Granger and his cohorts have refused to answer the question.
Recently, NICIL/SPU claimed they had disbursed more than $17B to GuySuCo, but GuySuCo claims they have received only about $11B. Even then, GuySuCo have never accounted to the people of Guyana or to the sugar workers how they spent that money. Worse, NICIL/SPU have never come clean and accounted for the money they said they disbursed to GuySuCo.
Guyana have paid billions in interest on that money, and we have nothing to show for the $30B. Never, not once, has David Granger said anything to this nation. This is the single largest loan ever taken by the Government of Guyana, and the man who was President of Guyana never said one word about the shameless mismanagement of the industry, nor the $30B loan his government burdened the people of Guyana with. Now that the people of Guyana have voted him out, and the new PPP Government has announced its plans to restore the glory of sugar, Granger has found his voice.
He has a special kind of dislike for sugar. The possibility that sugar would return bigger and better is giving him nightmares. Mr. Granger had better be prepared, because the PPP is serious: sugar estates will be reopened sooner rather than later.
One of the main reasons the people of Guyana fired David Granger as President; one of the most obvious reasons why the APNU+AFC Coalition lost the elections, was the closure of four sugar estates and the loss of employment for 7,500 sugar workers. More than 30,000 people directly, and almost 50,000 altogether, were recklessly thrown into poverty by the Granger-led Government.
It became obvious almost instantly that the closure of the sugar estates was a terrible mistake. It became painfully obvious, almost immediately after the closure of the estates, that the Granger-led Government miscalculated the social and economic impact of that mindless decision. Yet, at no point did they appear remorseful. Instead, they vigorously defended their action, insisting that they would not protect the interest of sugar workers.
They ignored the fact that some of these sugar workers were their own supporters, and that some of the sugar workers who traditionally supported the PPP had given them their votes in 2015. These sugar workers had the last laugh. The sugar workers voted overwhelmingly for Irfaan Ali and the PPP.
The Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, and the Minister of Agriculture, in keeping with a PPP manifesto promise, have announced plans to reopen sugar estates. While the reopening will take time and not all will be reopened at the same time, the PPP has already begun the work towards reopening the closed sugar estates. Mr. Granger, who rarely spoke during his five years as President, immediately dubbed the announcement as “fake”.
Granger had yet another opportunity to redeem himself, by giving full support to the PPP to correct a wrong he is responsible for. Yet he doubled-down and rejected the PPP’s efforts to reinvigorate the oldest industry in Guyana and the Caribbean.
The PPP leaders never doubted the fact that the sugar industry was experiencing tough times long before the Granger-led Government took over in 2015. Providing support to the sugar industry might have been a difficult thing, but it was a sensible thing. The PPP knew it was in the interest of Guyana to support the industry. When the Burnham and the Hoyte governments borrowed millions of US dollars from the sugar industry throughout the 1980s to support the bauxite industry, the PPP, then in opposition, supported the efforts to bail out bauxite. Not only did the PPP support the then PNC Government, the PPP based their support on the basis that subsidising and bailing out bauxite was in the national interest.
David Granger adopted a different posture in dealing with sugar, and claimed Government cannot allow sugar to bleed the treasury. He forgot that, in the 1980s, GuySuCo loaned the Government of Guyana the equivalent of more than $100B. Therefore, at no time during the last five years or the preceding five years was GuySuCo getting a handout. The bailout from which GuySuCo benefited was through their own funds – the Guyana Government had an obligation to pay back GuySuCo a small part of what they owed the industry.
But much of the money that was provided to GuySuCo in this era was money that sugar earned for Guyana through the European Union reparation payment for their arbitrary termination of the Cotonou Sugar Protocol of 1976. When the EU ended the price agreement without notice in 2010, it reduced GuySuCo’s earnings by more than 37%. In an agreement to ease the shock, the EU agreed to provide budgetary support in excess of $34B. Much of this budgetary support was provided as subsidy to GuySuCo before 2015.
Granger’s argument for closing the estates: because sugar was bleeding the treasury, is therefore a fake narrative. But even after 2015, GuySuCo was never given handouts. The Granger-led APNU+AFC took a loan of $30B, and this is a loan in the books of GuySuCo. The mismanagement of the $30B is yet another scandal.
The blow-blow Granger has found his voice for the wrong reason. The PPP will restore the vitality and glory of sugar. With the addition of ethanol at Albion, the packaging plants at Blairmont and Enmore, the production of white sugar for export, the addition of another distillery, the diversified sugar cane industry has its best days before it, not behind it. Granger should focus on apologising to the people of Guyana for impoverishing too many Guyanese.
Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy
