HGP Nightly News – Former Finance Minister Winston Jordan has branded the continued financial support of GUYSUCO a waste of public money, arguing that the industry remains incapable of delivering results that justify the billions being poured into it.
Speaking exclusively to Nightly News on the latest supplementary budget request, Jordan did not mince words.
“It’s a complete waste of money,” the former Finance Minister declared when asked about the additional allocation for the state-owned sugar company.
Jordan said the coalition government inherited an industry that was “completely bankrupt” when it took office in 2015.
“What we found there was an industry that was completely bankrupt. Completely bankrupt,” he said, explaining that the APNU+AFC administration had to find $12 billion between May and December of that year simply to keep the corporation afloat.
According to Jordan, billions of dollars continued to be injected into GuySuCo before the coalition eventually concluded that the industry required fundamental restructuring.
“After the third year, we decided this industry has to be restructured. It cannot continue the way it was going. There was no hope for it the way it was going,” he said.
That restructuring included consolidating operations, mothballing some estates and focusing resources on those with the best chance of operating efficiently.
Jordan argued that the economic conditions that once sustained Guyana’s sugar industry no longer exist.
“The days of sugar producing 300,000 tonnes are over, gone,” he said, adding that the preferential prices once offered by the European Union had masked inefficiencies within the industry for years.
“The industry doesn’t have any coming back, no matter what,” Jordan asserted.
He argued that the Government is now politically trapped and unwilling to implement the same difficult measures it once criticised.
According to Jordan, officials are reluctant to pursue major restructuring because doing so would validate decisions made under the previous administration.
For that reason, he believes taxpayers will continue footing the bill.
“It’s a long haul for the treasury in terms of wasting monies,” Jordan said.
He further claimed that despite the vast sums invested since 2020, production has failed to justify the expenditure.
“When you look at how much they have spent since they’ve come in, nearly $50 billion in the industry, to get production that doesn’t even meet our lowest production while we were coalition government,” Jordan said.
The former Finance Minister contended that GuySuCo has now become a political liability for the administration.
“For them, GuySuCo has now become the monkey on their back that they can’t throw off,” he stated.
Jordan also dismissed suggestions that management changes alone would solve the corporation’s challenges.
“I see all this talk about heads will roll and all this kind of story. It’s just that, talk,” he said.
His comments come as the Government seeks approval for another $3 billion injection into GuySuCo, one of the largest allocations contained in the $54.8 billion supplementary budget currently before the National Assembly.
