With the announced complete cessation of sugar production at LBI, many are questioning as to what exactly are the plans of the APNU/AFC coalition government for sugar. Before the 2011 elections, the Presidential candidate for the PNC, David Granger had told a GMSA business luncheon: “I would like to get out of state-owned media, state-owned petroleum distribution, state-owned sugar. I don’t think this is the concern of the state… I don’t think there is any place for state ownership of those things anymore; certainly not under David Granger.”
By 2015, now in the Cummingsburg brokered coalition with the AFC, Granger modified his stance somewhat: “We are not going to dissolve the sugar industry; we want the turnaround plan, we want to sit down with GuySuCo and turn the industry around; it is too big to fail,” he told this newspaper. However, as we reported at the time, Granger had not really shifted his fundamental position, as some – especially among then AFC leadership – thought he had. It was just that he had a specific understanding of what he meant by “not failing”.
Because as he then further asserted, the partnership “would not want to be pumping billions of dollars” into the industry; hence, the need for privatisation. To Granger, privatisation was a viable option to “save the industry” when even Forbes Burnham had rejected that option as selling out the country’s patrimony to that would have off the most valuable asset of GuySuCo – the land – and close the factories. In Granger’s own words, “There will be a gradual transference of more agricultural or field production to private hands, but for the time being, we see that the factory operations will continue to be centralised, but it is our view that more of the production should be in private hands.”
He warned that the partnership “would not want to be pumping billions of dollars” into it; hence, the need for privatisation. “There will be a gradual transference of more agricultural or field production to private hands, but for the time being, we see that the factory operations will continue to be centralised, but it is our view that more of the production should be in private hands.”
It is therefore clear that those who are complaining that the Sugar Industry’s CoI Report was abandoned do not appreciate that Granger is merely proceeding along the path he had clearly articulated during the elections campaign a year ago. The closure of the sugar factory at Wales and its “consolidation” with Uitvlugt and now the “consolidation” of LBI with Enmore, is precisely in line with Granger’s plans. It was also clear, notwithstanding his protestations, Prime Ministerial Candidate Moses Nagamootoo from the AFC was also au fait with the planned closures.
Speaking on Arrival Day at Highbury Park, East Bank Berbice, the site where the first indentured Indians set foot in Guyana, Nagamootoo gave an indication of what was the plan for sugar: “Our ancestors worked very hard and today we still have their descendants on the sugar estate working very hard and of course they deserve to reap the contributions made by their ancestors and they don’t need to be afraid that the factory may be closed and that they may be out of jobs. They need to be guaranteed that even if there is factory closure on the sugar estates that the land must first go to the sugar workers. Let them choose if they want to grow cane on it, let them choose if they want to rear fish on it or they want to rear cattle on it. The land belongs to the ancestors of our Indian foreparents who worked in the sugar industry…”
The question is, if Granger is preparing GuySuCo for privatisation, and the latter’s land is its most valuable asset, what will be left for Nagamootoo’s “ancestral land”?
