Company gets $3.4 billion more in budgetary allocation

The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has invited persons to invest in some 25 per cent of the corporation’s lands to plant sugar cane and supply it to its Albion, Blairmont, Rose Hall, and Uitvlugt estates.

This is based a request for Expressions of Interest, which has been published by GuySuCo.

According to the notice, “GuySuCo invites eligible, qualified and experienced individuals, companies or consortiums to indicate their interest in cultivating and delivering sugar canes to the factories in a private sector managed arrangement”.

The notice states: “The lands to be cultivated are owned and or controlled by GuySuCo and authorization will be granted to the successful parties to produce sugar canes. On these designated lands, the private sector is expected to harvest and deliver the sugar canes to the factories at Albion, Rose Hall, Blairmont and Uitvlugt Estates.”

Request for more money approved

The Guyanese government’s request for an additional $3.4 billion for GuySuCo was approved by the National Assembly with Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha explaining that the monies will go towards the continuation of the recapitalization of the company. The monies approved are in addition to a $6 billion allocated to the corporation in the 2022 budget.

Prior to this, the government provided operational and restructuring support to GuySuCo in the sum of $11 billion and also injected $600 million to assist with wages and salaries. This latest $3.4 billion in supplementary funding brings the total budgetary support to $20.4 billion.

“What we have done over the last two years is to replace a number of critical missing parts and continue the recapitalisation we started in 2020,” Mustapha said. He noted that the government will use these funds to make the factories modern and efficient while increasing production.

To this end, the minister recommitted to the full reopening of the Rose Hall Estate soon.

“The Rose Hall estate will be reopened,” the minister said in response to a question from Seepaul Narine, president of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).

FOCUS ON MORE BAGGED, PACKAGED SUGAR PRODUCTS

He explained that lands have been tilled, roads rehabilitated, bridges repaired and drainage canals cleaned, all towards the reopening efforts. These interventions came following the closure of four sugar estates (Wales, Skeldon, Rose Hall, and Enmore) and the retrenchment of over 7,000 sugar workers by the previous APNU+AFC government.

These investments will be undertaken with the ultimate objective of ensuring that each estate is able to break in the not-too-distant future. In anticipation of improved production levels, GuySuCo will be concentrating its marketing efforts on shifting from the low-value bulk-sugar markets to more bagged and packaged sugar products.

The government had previously said that there will be a significant reduction in dependency on government support by 2026.