Dear Editor,
It was quite interesting to read, on June 28, 2017, an article which reported that Government-appointed sugar salesman Wesley Kirton said that several foreign-owned companies have expressed interest in investing in the sugar industry. Mr Kirton mentioned, among other things, that there is talk about investment in a sugar refinery to tap the lucrative Caribbean market.
In a previous letter, I did share with the Guyanese public a GuySuCo document in which the sugar company advised the Government to inform investors about the potential for sugar refining, and the windfalls that can be had in engaging in it. Clearly, from Mr Kirton’s statements, the investors have been advised, and they are naturally enthused. It is saddening that the State-owned sugar company is operating in such a hand-in-glove manner, especially when that windfall rightly and correctly belongs to Guyana and Guyanese. The article goes on to say that among the interested parties is US-multinational American Sugar Refiners (ASR), one of its subsidiaries being Tate and Lyle. ASR was a name, I understand, being among those interested in acquiring Skeldon, but they were seeking a straw buyer to make the purchase on their behalf à la D. Rampersaud of Trinidad and Tobago.
ASR, I was also made to understand, had meetings abroad with very high Guyanese officials. One can’t help but wonder whether any pact has already been sealed.
ASR also has some interests in Booker Tate. The latter had managed GuySuCo in the past; and also, through a separate contract, had managed the design and supervision of the Skeldon factory as well as the accompanying agricultural expansion. Their ‘experts’ had approved and signed off on all works and components delivered and installed at Skeldon. Many are aware that the current GuySuCo CEO, who, according to what I read in the press, is exorbitantly paid, was at one time a senior Booker-Tate official. The point here is that we see the entrance of ASR into the fray at the same time when one of its former senior officials heads the Corporation. Well, it does seem that the puzzle is slowly coming together, and the picture is becoming clearer. One cannot help but see what is apparently a well-rehearsed and very much laid out plan, that would see billions of dollars rightly belonging to GuySuCo and Guyanese being siphoned off to aristocrats in foreign lands.
If my memory serves me right, wasn’t national ownership of sugar in the mid-70s; after independence, one of the high points of the LFS Burnham Administration? Well! Well! Well!
Yours truly,
Patricia Persaud
