For state companies like GuySuCo, seeking large-scale operational improvements rather than shuttering factories is the key to success. By announcing his decision to move the sugar industry from a 7-factory industry to a 3-factory one, President Granger has basically taken the decision to emasculate the social and economic foundations of the industry with his own hands, without professionally exploring all the options. It is now becoming very clear that this process was politically rigged from day one with the Parvattan Commission.
Jock Campbell once said that the success of sugar has to be grounded in three fundamental principles: (1) increased efficiency; (2) price for its production; and, most importantly (3) the human relationship management in the industry. On all three scores, both the PPP under Raj Singh and now the PNC-led Government under Errol Hanoman have failed to comprehensively address these issues. The fastest way for any company to secure the right price for its production is to most efficiently deliver the right product demanded by the market.
The market needs refined sugar; alcohol; packaged sugar (especially in the small sachets); agro-energy; ethanol, and even agro-tourism. In reality, GuySuCo barely sells a little agro-energy and a small amount of packaged sugar. It does not take an Einstein to figure out why the industry is failing: it is because of the political leadership in the agricultural sector (Holder/Thomas/Hanoman), which just cannot frame the solution required for GuySuCo (meaning: plain and simple incompetence).
Granger, at the West Berbice exhibition, told the nation that only Blairmont, Uitvlugt, and Albion estates would remain in Government’s hands. I respond to such utter nonsense with this verse of scripture: “Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds”! This declaration from Granger is most deceptive and disingenuous. What the President is not saying is that both Skeldon and Rose Hall estates have higher yields (tonnes sugar per hectare of land) than Uitvlugt (see graph below).
What Granger is not saying is that both Rose Hall and Enmore estates have a more efficient cost structure than Uitvlugt Estate when it comes to the cost of production per pound of sugar produced. What is worse is that the evidence is now manifest that even the now shuttered Wales Sugar Estate had a more efficient cost structure and a higher yield than Uitvlugt. So the rationale for shutting the Wales Factory was all along beyond reasonable logic, and was nothing but a political gimmick to give coverage for the PNC master plan to plunder the land for their business associates at a discounted price.
This preconceived fix by the PNC and the comatose AFC to keep GuySuCo as a raw bulk sugar producer has deeper purposes; one that is political and the other because of massive corruption. Any school child will know that raw bulk sugar is the poison pill that would move the sugar belt from being in a coma to actually dying. Yet there is massive resistance by the Granger team to upgrading the sugar industry into a value-added sugar-related products’ manufacturer. Why?
Has Noel Holder or his close sugar advisors conceptualised how to expand the operational-improvement programme in the sugar belt? Have they used their offices to create new markets in value-added products, and taken any steps to climb that value chain? Does Holder or Thomas have the skill set to assemble the required private capital to move the entire industry up the value chain? More importantly, can this troika motivate the employees to support the reforms? I am challenging anyone to show me the evidence where this troika has successfully run anything in the past. They are all failures rehashed from the past, but with that “Midas Touch” that Walter Rodney once spoke about. Holder touched the agriculture sector with his “Midas Touch” and it declined by 10.4% in 2016. There is more misery to come from these “Kings Midas” in 2017.
As President Granger flounders in his fog of strategic delusion on the question of developing Guyana, he has paid very little strategic attention to answering the question of how to move the sugar industry up the value chain to enhance the revenue potential. By failing to competently lead the nation on this sugar issue and do his job for which Guyanese people are paying him a package of more than Gy$30 million a year, he has done nothing but infuse much hopelessness in thousands of rural families. Is this his brand of “LET US CO-OPERATE FOR GUYANA”?
