Closing SUGAR has been an obsession with the Opposition since before 1992. In Guyanese parlance, some people are “hard ears”, meaning they do not listen and learn. I will reiterate for the naysayers to hear loud and clear: SUGAR is here to stay.
The SUGAR narrative in Guyana has had various chapters, good times and bad times, but the Irfaan Ali-led PPP government is determined, like predecessor governments led by Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, to write new chapters of an evolving industry. This column last week highlighted the dog-whistle messaging employed by the Opposition to threaten SUGAR, clearly implying that the policies of the then PNC-led APNU/AFC government (2015-2020) will be resurrected once the PNC is in Government. That policy led to the closure of four sugar estates, and had the No-Confidence Motion not blocked them, the PNC-led APNU/AFC government would have shuttered the whole industry by now.
The Opposition’s pathological obsession with SUGAR exposes their unwillingness to acknowledge that this failed policy was a significant factor in their resounding defeat in Elections 2020. In fact, the Opposition is doubling down on failed policies, such as the 2AM curfew and the closure of SUGAR. The main reason for their obsession with closure is that they must punish sugar workers for supporting the PPP, as Khemraj Ramjattan confessed in Parliament. They continue to be myopic, failing to see the demographics showing the workforce for SUGAR includes increasing numbers of persons from villages and communities traditionally considered as PNC strongholds.
The dog-whistling threats issued in a recent statement from Aubrey Norton, the Leader of the Opposition, and repeated in Parliament by various Opposition speakers last week, are not new. In late 2015, it became clear that the then David Granger-led Government was on a path to close SUGAR, no matter what words were being used. When, before the closure of Wales, I highlighted in a letter to the press that sugar cane cultivation was ended at various places — such as Providence, a part of the Rose Hall Estate — the GUYSUCO PR Department went into a frenzy to deny such things had happened. But I had walked through those abandoned cane fields in Providence, other parts of Rose Hall Estate, Skeldon, and Wales, and knew exactly what I was talking about.
The closure narrative (disguised as “downsizing”, “reengineering” or “restructuring”) justification is the subsidies that GUYSUCO has had since 2010. The naysayers have been banging on this door for years, but supporting in difficult moments an industry which is critical to the economy is not a new or untried concept. In 2008, when the financial crises brought economic chaos around the world, governments in the EU and America stepped in and bailed out companies that were about to collapse. In America, the justification was that the financial sector was about 1.5% of the GDP, and therefore too big to fail. The same happened for the automotive industry. In India, PM Indira Gandhi in the 1970s ensured the public transport industry was subsidized, so that it could employ hundreds of thousands of people even though it was determined there were too many workers. In all these cases, subsidization was considered the more affordable, most effective, and most morally correct option.
Just in case anyone forgets, billions of dollars earned through the sweat, blood and sacrifice of sugar workers have been siphoned off by PNC-led governments in the 1970s and 1980s, and again between 2015 and 2020. Through NICIL, between 2016 and 2019, government usurped more than 4,600 acres of GUYSUCO’s land, conservatively valued at more than $80B. In particular, lands at Wales were sold off by the government to hand-picked persons and entities.
Through the 1976 Forbes Burnham-led PNC Government sugar nationalization, illegal taxation in the 1970s, loans from GUYSUCO’s accounts in the 1980s, the sugar levy and transfer of land from GUYSUCO to Government, GUYSUCO is owed way far more than $100B. GUYSUCO is also saddled with a 2016 $30B loan taken by the Granger-led Government through NICIL. Most of that money never led to any meaningful investment in GUYSUCO.
Then there is the more than $100B in today’s value that they ripped out of GUYSUCO through the 26-year-long shameful sugar levy. But, in addition, they borrowed money from GUYSUCO that amount to billions also. For example, they owed more than $25B to Bookers in the nationalization deal. They took that money out of GUYSUCO. In 1974, they instituted an illegal tax on the gross revenue of GUYSUCO that took out about $17B from GUYSUCO, and ended only after the workers went on strike for 135 days in 1977. The workers were never compensated for the money the Government took out illegally between 1974 and 1977. GUYSUCO is merely asking Guyana, not for a handout, but just to pay back a fraction of the money we took to prop-up dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.
Also, just in case we have forgotten – GUYSUCO is not the only subsidy in Budget 2024, original or supplementary. Electricity in the mining towns of Region 10 continue to be subsidized at more than $5B annually. There are special and differential needs being recognized by a sensible Government.
The GUYSUCO payback helps maintain a productive sector; more than 17,000 employees and their families; support the local economies in Regions Three, Four, Five and Six; provides infrastructural and operational support for drainage and irrigation in these regions, at a cost of billions, that GUYSUCO does not recover.
SUGAR is pivotal for the food and energy security platforms that Guyana has taken leadership in on the global stage. Sugar’s ethanol future will help the transport industry’s vision to restrict fossil fuel. At the same time, sugar’s overall positive impact on agriculture helps to achieve the food security ambition of Guyana and CARICOM. The vision is clear – SUGAR is part of this vision.
