Wally

The reality is different from emotional attachment regarding Guysuco. Guysuco needs to diversify or privatized otherwise it will die. This is a harsh reality.

On a recent trip to Guyana (Berbice), Guysuco had a vehicle and it was travelling along the road literally begging harvesters to show up and work. 

Indo Guyanese are moving away from the difficult task of cane harvesting. 

Many years ago, Guysuco started a pilot project of diversification where rice and corn was planted and the amount of rice and corn that was grown had tremendous yields. The problem back then is that the PNC managers did not understand rice or corn harvesting and tons and tons of rice and corn perished as a result of PNC mismanagement.

Diversification will cost billions of Guyana dollars and private partnership will benefit the entire nation. We need to get away from a socialist approach regarding Guysuco. Indeed management of Guysuco needs to be shuffled but this this will be a political one since many of the managers are from the PNC days.

Guysuco needs to diversify and privatized or it will die a slow death. The "luxury" that you speak about is only a drop in the bucket of what Guysuco spends. Time to seriously look at all options for Guysuco. The opposition must also be a partner in this process.

Wally, I think I understand what is behind your proposals.

Indeed, GuySuCo's problems are many and difficult, but not unsolvable.

Some of your ideas can work, and yuji22's ideas can be tried too.

I want to put forward another approach with a caveat; it should be tried only on one sugar estate.

What I have in mind is for the workers of a given estate to form a co-operative and offer to buy the estate. GuySuCo and GAWU should cooperate and permit the co-op venture.

The co-op should have a free hand in management and production. It could enter into a marketing agreement with GuySuCo.

I must admit my idea begs some important questions, but some things are worth trying.

Gilly Bhai, I think your idea is BRILLANT and certainly deserve to be given a try. I hope someone at Guysuco who is competent will see this.

Bookman this co-op venture is a better idea than giving the corporation to the capitalists to run and abuse the workers like what we had in the past.

The problem of GUYSUCO is not capitalist greed but incompetence, more so what a Galbraithian may call dependence effects ie management assuming they need a grand mill, management ostentation and plain stupidity. You are also naively believing that those fellows in office have the workers needs in their mind. That Robert persaud can still have  guards at guysuco's expense and appropriate its equipment fuel is an example of th their nonchalance. Paying the incompetent Raj Singh 25 K as a part time chairman is another of these. That they accepted a mill that was crippled meant they concerned themselves more with the graft the received on initiating this project than demanding the builders warranty their work. Note we also lost millions in EU subsidy because Robert Persaud sat on his ass rather than file the necessary papers in time. The industry suffers from bad management, plain and simple.

I never said that I agreed that Robert Persaud can have  guards at Guysuco's expense.  I said that the man has a right to have four armed guards at his house to protect himself. The cost should be paid by the State.  These armed guards can be soldiers thus saving the state money.

The free market is the best solution for Guysuco. The job of government is to govern, not run industry. The taxpayers bailouts keep this inefficient industry going years beyond its natural life. In the world of business, all corporation eventually die off, even the CEO of Amazon admits this, his job he says it to postpone the inevitable as long as he can. It is only a matter of time.

Bai, like some thing gan wrang wid yuh. Dem houses are needed for the SENIOR STAFF.

Take a look at some sugar-cane cooperatives:

[1] SUGAR CANE GROWERS COOPERATIVE OF FLORIDA

http://www.scgc.org/

[2] NATIONAL FEDERATION OF COOPERATIVE SUGAR FACTORIES IN INDIA

http://coopsugar.org/history.php

Political opportunism while an industry collapses

DEAR EDITOR,
Tony Vieira and E.B. John have done a commendable job putting statistics and cold hard facts about GuySuCo into the public sphere. They have both highlighted the outlandish wage costs of the sugar industry as a serious part of the problem, but they have not delved into why this tragedy persists.
It is actually very simple. It has its roots in racial politics and ethno-political machinations. It is the PPP using taxpayers’ money to buy and retain its voter pool in the sugar belt. The majority of those who work for GuySuCo are PPP supporters. Instead of trying to fix the industry and drive down costs by mechanizing, even in the face of a departing and vanishing workforce no longer interested in slaving in sugar, the PPP has been throwing more and more money at those who remain.
Incidentally, that remaining workforce has become lazier, with turnout and productivity at its lowest levels. So, the PPP is fattening a slothful problem. In addition, the reckless throwing of taxpayers’ money into sugar has created a fat cat class of bloodsucking executives who are living the hog off of taxpayers.
These reported benefits of these executives remind us most tellingly of how utterly mangled GuySuCo has become. So, here we have it – cheap PPP political opportunism practiced solely to hold onto a group of supporters/voters while ignoring the deadly and catastrophic economic tsunami facing the sugar industry.
The misguided minds at Freedom House are only concerned with holding onto power at any cost, and will continue to throw taxpayers’ money at this white elephant.
If we think things are bad now, wait until the EU erases all subsidies for Guyana’s sugar in 2016. The PPP’s response would likely be to throw even more money from taxpayers into propping up its supporters in the sugar belt with economically unsustainable and fiscally unwarranted jobs, just so these people will vote for them. This is as grand a Ponzi scheme as it gets, and come 2016 when the EU drives their nail in the sugar industry’s coffin, some of those same individuals who will vote for the PPP will lose the shirts on their backs.
GuySuCo has become the bauxite industry during the PNC times, when taxpayers’ money was blindly thrown at that industry to prop up jobs for PNC supporters while the industry rotted away and eventually derailed after the PNC lost power. That said, the bauxite industry never faced a looming catastrophe like the end of the EU preferential price for Guyana’s sugar.
When that goes, the entire sugar industry will have to find markets on its own and to compete with lower pricing from countries that have massively increased their production levels in the past 21 years. Because the Jagdeo-Ramotar cabal will not do it due to political exploitation and opportunism, the PPP supporters in the sugar belt have to start asking serious questions of the PPP leadership, because things are going to be economically devastating in the sugar belt come 2016. In fact, the EU preferential pricing cessation and its profound impact in the sugar industry could see the PPP lose power in 2016 due to disillusionment and economic hardship from its own sugar belt supporters and mass migration by these supporters from a collapsed sugar industry to foreign pastures.
M. Maxwell

Another piece of toilet paper journalism. PPP will always be in power.

If all of you nay sayers are so concerned with the direction of Guysuco and you feel you have the answers, go to Guyana and tell Ramotar and the rest how you think the industry can be saved.