Dear Editor,
Agriculture Month is here, and it is time to reflect on the tremendous achievements and steady progress that agriculture has made under this PPP/C Government; the Ministry of Agriculture being under the astute and competent leadership of the Honourable Zulfikar Mustapha, Minister of Agriculture.
To fully appreciate this accomplishment, it is imperative that we analyze what took place during the Coalition’s term in office, which saw the wilfully planned and systematic destruction of that sector.
They slashed the budgetary allocation each year, thereby ensuring under-capitalization of the sector, thereby hindering its rehabilitation and growth.
It must be recalled that the budgetary allocation in 2018 was slashed by $1.351 billion after the closure of 4 grinding sugar estates. One would have expected that sums of money saved from these closure exercises would have been utilized to rehabilitate and capitalize the remaining estates, or the other sub-sector of agriculture. But this was wishful thinking, since the malevolent intention was complete closure of GuySuCo. This is despite the Coalition having promised not to close any of the estates.
In 2015, at the Arthur Convention Center, the ‘champion’ of the sugar workers, Moses Nagamootoo, uttered these words: “The focus is to make sugar work. We have too many workers who stand to lose with the collapse of the industry. This new Government will not allow sugar to sink.” This was hypocrisy at its best. As early as 2013, he called GuySuCo ‘a black hole’; but he went further in November 2016, a year after his proclamation at the Arthur Chung Center, when he said sugar workers were deemed raiders of the Treasury. “Bailing out GuySuCo is like raiding the Treasury,” he bragged.
The words of Agriculture Minister the Honourable Zulfikar Mustapha will reverberate in the minds of Guyanese for a long time to come. He profoundly declared to the Coalition in Parliament that sugar had ‘lost its taste’ under the APNU/AFC Administration, but the sweetness of sugar’ will return under the PPP/C Government. His words came to pass, as his government did Mission Impossible by reopening the Rose Hall Estate while the others are works-in-progress with various developmental options.
Moreover, the Coalition deemed the rice industry, and by extension the other crops, livestock and fishing, to be private business.
New lands should have been opened for rice farming and other crops, and the cost of machinery, fertilizers and chemicals should have been subsidized to assist farmers who were at their wits’ end to produce to eke out a living. Instead, in its insane haste to refill the empty coffers which were quickly being squandered, the Coalition increased D&I charges and implemented VAT on agricultural machinery and equipment. Drainage and Irrigation infrastructure fell apart rapidly, access dams became canals, and the farmers were left to fend for themselves.
This Government pressed the ‘undo’ button, and the rice industry is growing by leaps and bounds, like all the other sub-sectors.
In September 2020, the Minister of Agriculture made a commitment when he boldly declared that, in the next 5 years, implementation of measures to promote a diversified agriculture-based economy would be seen; more jobs would be created; and the incomes of farmers would be increased. He emphasized that this would be done by modernizing and upgrading infrastructure, strengthening support services, creating robust marketing systems at local and international levels, and increasing Guyana’s market share. None of this was empty rhetoric; it all came to pass, and much more was achieved.
For their entire term in office, the Coalition had been piloting Guyana on the course of the oil curse, which would have been the result of their woeful and calculated neglect of the sector compounded by gross incompetence.
Undoubtedly, absolute revitalization of the agriculture sector began in 2020, and is marked by renewed understanding and recommitment to the fundamental role of agriculture in the nation’s developmental process by this Government, skillfully driven by the most competent Agriculture Minister ever.
In conclusion, the great achievements of this sector must be applauded vociferously by all Guyanese every single day, especially since the sector has overcome the brutal decimation engineered by the APNU/AFC.
Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
