Former President Donald Ramotar replies to Tony Vieira

Dear Editor,

I WISH to thank my good friend, Tony Vieira for his letter in the Stabroek News November 1, 2020. This was in reply to an earlier letter of mine on the challenges in the sugar industry.

In the beginning, let me say that I do not disagree with Tony on his “aquaculture” proposal; my view is that it does not have to be at the expense of sugar. We can do both, and aquaculture could be pursued in other areas of our country, which will provide even greater employment and wealth creation.

Some or all of the arguments by Mr. Vieira against sugar are really managerial in content, and the need to modernise the industry. I strongly believe that sugar still has a great future; that its best days could well be ahead of it.

The biggest challenge in achieving a vibrant industry is fundamentally managerial.
For instance, Tony had told us about getting cut canes to the factory within 48 hours. This is a logistical/managerial issue; it should not be a determinant not to plant canes.

I do not agree with him that our high cost of production is as a result of our rainfall pattern. I think a lot of it has to do with the inefficiencies in the factories; a problem that could be solved with, again, management, and some investments in the factories to enhance their extractive capacity.

Our rainfall issue is not a problem as Mr. Vieira implies, but more of a blessing. We get two crops per year as compared to other countries, due to our rainfall pattern.

Mr. Vieira hinted at the problems of mechanisation, suggesting that it could not be done. However, if you look at the industry in Louisiana, which has similar conditions as ours, we see quite a lot of mechanisation there. The Louisiana industry found engineering solutions to soft-soil conditions.

We in Guyana can go to semi-mechanisation. At Skeldon, for instance, field design was done to do both mechanical and semi-mechanical harvesting. Enmore lands were converted to facilitate similar harvesting, and also manual.

So we see that this is not re-inventing the wheel; it was being done. It has been done elsewhere in the world, and it certainly can be done here. Indeed we had gone a considerable way in this direction before the industry was struck by “Hurricane PNC”.
I did mention in my earlier piece that we can produce ethanol without sacrificing sugar production. My view is that we should arrange our factories to be able to switch quickly from sugar to ethanol, depending on the prevailing prices.

Implicit in Mr. Vieira’s letter is the idea that ethanol-price is stable; it is not. It is a function of the price of fuel. That is why we should be able to switch from one to the other, as the Brazilians do.

Raw-sugar price will not always be low, since the amount of countries gong out of sugar will surely create shortages, which would send prices up again.

In any case, my view is that we should steer the industry away from producing raw sugar, to the multitude of products that it can do. In my previous piece, I mentioned some of the value-added products we can pursue.

The issue is a management one, firstly. We have to have the right people for the jobs; I am not convinced that this is the case at the moment. We are not tapping into all the rich experience that we have available here; mainly, highly-skilled Guyanese are “kicking bricks”.

Instead, we have some persons in place who seem woefully short, or totally lacking in the skills needed for this major effort to turn the industry around.

I spoke about attitudes both on the side of the managers and workers. For the industry to go forward, sacrifices have to be made in this period. The industry is almost on its back, and, therefore, we should ask management and senior persons to take a salary cut, to show total commitment to our cause. We can’t pay the same salaries as when the industry was vibrant.

This is important, since it is clear that the workers would also have to be asked to sacrifice, too, in terms of wages at this time; we must not put all the burden on the workers.

Moreover, we must not confine ourselves to one form of ownership; we can have a rich mix. State-owned; the factories; joint ventures; private and cooperative ownership in agriculture, and in the production of new products. Joint ventures and/or private in a new distillery in a new refinery and other products. There are many other forms that can be explored.

To conclude, I believe that we need a strong technical team in the field as well as in the factory, to improve processes and to cut costs. GuySuCo could save millions in switching to liquid fertilisers, which we can produce ourselves. Another area where we can save a lot is in procurement from where we purchase inputs could create significant savings, which the industry badly needs.

Failing to tackle these problems now; the people’s problem being the most important, will only result in throwing money at the problem; it is a path to failure, and to the demise of the industry.

We must avoid that; we can avoid that, and GuySuCo can take its place once again.

Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar,
Former President of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana