Just in case anyone forgets, billions of dollars earned through the sweat, blood and sacrifice of sugar workers have been siphoned off by PNC-led governments in the 1970s and 1980s and again between 2015 and 2020. Through NICIL, between 2016 and 2019, government usurped more than 4,600 acres of GUYSUCO’s land, conservatively valued at more than $80B. In particular, lands at Wales were sold off by the government to hand-picked persons and entities. Through the 1976 Forbes Burnham-led PNC Government sugar nationalization, illegal taxation in the 1970s, loans from GUYSUCO’s accounts in the 1980s, the sugar levy and transfer of land from GUYSUCO to government, GUYSUCO is owed way far more than $100B. GUYSUCO is also saddled with a 2016 $30B loan taken by the Granger-led government through NICIL. Most of that money never led to any meaningful investment into GUYSUCO.
Then there is the more than $100B in today’s value that they ripped out of GUYSUCO through the 26-years long shameful sugar levy. But, in addition, they borrowed money from GUYSUCO that amount to billions also. For example, they owed more than $25B to Bookers in the nationalization deal. They took that money out of GUYSUCO. In 1974, they instituted an illegal tax on the gross revenue of GUYSUCO that took out about $17B from GUYSUCO and only ended after the workers went on strike for 135 days in 1977. The workers were never compensated for the money the government took out illegally between 1974 and 1977. GUYSUCO is merely asking Guyana, not for a handout, but just to payback a fraction of the money we took to prop-up dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.
Just because we need to payback GUYSUCO some of what we owe, the PNC-led opposition wants to close SUGAR. Well the people of Guyana unequivocally reject the threat to close SUGAR.
Just in case we need another reminder, at any time, tens of thousands of people receive monthly pension from GUYSUCO. Any closure of GUYSUCO will place a burden on Central Government to take over payments to pensioners. The wild talks about downsizing and closure of GUYSUCO are reckless and criminal.
But the Guyanese people will not permit the PNC and the naysayers to get near to the seat of power where they could accomplish their obsession of ending SUGAR in Guyana. The people rejected this reprehensible move in Election 2020 and will do so overwhelmingly again in Election 2025.
All the pensioners from GUYSUCO also receive the Government old-age pension which in 2024 is $36,000 per month. In 2024, it will be a minimum of $41,000 per month. In 2022, in addition, every pensioner received one extra month of payment, receiving 13 payments for the year. In 2023, every pensioner received a grant of $25,000. Hopefully, in 2024, every one of the 72,000 pensioners will also receive a grant that will add to the 12 monthly payments.
Between GUYSUCO and Government’s old age pension schemes, more than $40B annually enter the economic sphere of Guyana. The naysayers who want to close SUGAR never consider the consequences. GUYSUCO pension are not just entitlements – these are earned property since GUYSUCO’s pensions are contributory.
Guyana is one of only a handful of countries globally that provides a monthly non-contributory pension payment to every citizen age 65 years or older, regardless of whether they also earn additional pension from contributory schemes. In 1994, Guyana had removed the means test linked to old-age pension that the country inherited from colonial times. In addition, the colonial version of the old-age pension only entitled one member of the family to benefit. In 1994, a Cheddi Jagan-led PPP government introduced a universal access to old-age pension. Sugar workers and other workers who were entitled to contributory pension continue today to benefit from the government’s old age pension.
Talks of downsizing and closure of SUGAR threaten the welfare of thousands of people. The pension issue is only one of the several reasons why the wild talk of downsizing and closure bring fear to thousands of families across Guyana.
Last week, in Parliament, the recklessness of the opposition was on full display. These clueless people are so tone-deaf they cannot see the agony and fear they cause people; they cannot hear the cries of people whose blood and sweat have contributed over many decades to the survival of our country. While Guyana today has began to progress through oil and gas revenues, Guyana’s future cannot be an oil and gas economy. Guyana needs a diversified economy and the traditional economic powerhouses such as SUGAR must continue to be major economic centers. From Parika in Region 3 to Crabwood Creek in Region 6 and all across Guyana, citizens know how important SUGAR is to Guyana’s prosperity.
The only ones who play dumb and deaf are those in the PNC and AFC leadership.
Election 2020 was a kind of referendum on a number of issues. One was the PNC and its obsession with closing SUGAR. Clearly the people of Guyana overwhelmingly rejected the policies of the PNC which were geared towards closing SUGAR. They have not learnt their lessons at all. As Elections 2025 approach, the PNC is doubling down on their obsession, always challenging the Guyanese people that it does not matter how they feel, that a new PNC government will close SUGAR. Well, the threat has been duly noted and in 2025, the Guyanese people will make certain that the PNC will never again be allowed to be near the seat of government where they can do their mischief.
It is not just the almost 20,000 active sugar workers and their families, it is also the tens of thousands who receive a monthly GUYSUCO pension. Altogether, more than 60,000 citizens are affected by the wild talk of closure, no matter how the talk is disguised.
Closing SUGAR has been an opposition obsession since before 1992. In Guyanese parlance, some people are ‘hard ears”, meaning they do not listen and learn. I will reiterate for the naysayers to hear loud and clear – SUGAR is here to stay.
The SUGAR narrative in Guyana has had various chapters, good times and bad times, but the Irfaan Ali-led PPP government is determined, like predecessor governments led by Bharat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, to write new chapters of an evolving industry. This column, last week, highlighted the dog-whistle messaging employed by the opposition to threaten SUGAR, clearly implying that the policies of the then PNC-led APNU/AFC government (2015-2020) will be resurrected once the PNC is in government. That policy led to the closure of four sugar estates and, had the No-Confidence Motion not blocked them, the PNC-led APNU/AFC government would have shuttered the whole industry by now.
The opposition’s pathological obsession with SUGAR exposes their unwillingness to acknowledge that this failed policy was a significant factor in their Elections 2020 resounding defeat. In fact, the opposition is doubling down on failed policies, such as the 2 AM curfew and the closure of SUGAR. The main reason for their closure obsession is that they must punish sugar workers for supporting the PPP, as Khemraj Ramjattan confessed in Parliament. They continue to be myopic, failing to see the demographics showing the workforce for SUGAR includes increasing numbers of persons from villages and communities traditionally considered as PNC strongholds.
The dog-whistling threats issued in a recent statement from Aubrey Norton, the Leader of the Opposition, and repeated in parliament by various opposition speakers last week are not new. In late 2015, it became clear that the then David Granger-led government was on a path to close SUGAR, no matter what words were being used. When, before the closure of Wales, I highlighted in a letter to the press that sugar cane cultivation was ended at various places such as Providence, a part of the Rose Hall Estate, the GUYSUCO PR department went into a frenzy to deny such things had happened. But I had walked through those abandoned cane fields in Providence, other parts of Rose Hall Estate, Skeldon, and Wales and knew exactly what I was talking about.
The closure narrative (disguised as “downsizing”, “reengineering” or “restructuring”) justification is the subsidies that GUYSUCO has had since 2010. The naysayers have been banging on this door for years. But supporting an industry which is critical in the economy in difficult moments is not a new or untried concept. In 2008, when the financial crises brought economic chaos around the world, the governments in the EU and in America stepped in and bailed out the companies that were about to collapse. In America the justification was that the financial sector was about 1.5% of the GDP and, therefore, too big to fail. The same happened for the automotive industry. In India, PM Indira Gandhi, in the 1970s, ensured the public transport industry was subsidized so that it could employ hundreds of thousands of people, even though it was determined there were too many workers. In all these cases, subsidization was considered the more affordable, most effective and most morally correct option.
Also, just in case we have forgotten – GUYSUCO is not the only subsidy in Budget 2024, original or supplementary. Electricity in the mining towns of Region 10 continue to be subsidized at more than $5B annually. The University of Guyana gets a subvention of more than $5B annually and come next year with free university, this subvention will rise dramatically. There are special and differential needs being recognized by a sensible government.
The GUYSUCO payback helps maintain a productive sector, more than 17,000 employees and their families, support the local economies in Regions Three, Four, Five and Six, provides infrastructural and operational support for drainage and irrigation in these regions, at a cost of billions, that GUYSUCO does not recover.
SUGAR is pivotal for the food and energy security platforms that Guyana has taken leadership in on the global stage. Sugar’s ethanol future will help the transport industry’s vision to restrict fossil fuel. At the same time, sugar’s overall positive impact on agriculture helps to achieve the food security ambition of Guyana and CARICOM. The vision is clear – SUGAR is part of this vision.