By| Jevone Vickerie | HGP Nightly News|
FORMER FINANCE MINISTER CRITICIZES LATEST $3B GUYSUCO BAILOUT, CITING ‘NO REALISTIC PATH TO RECOVERY’
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — Former Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has strongly criticized the government’s decision to allocate an additional $3 billion to the struggling Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), asserting that decades of continuous state bailouts have failed to steer the industry toward long-term sustainability.
The new $3 billion injection is part of a broader $54.8 billion supplementary budget currently awaiting approval in the National Assembly. Speaking exclusively to HGP Nightly News, Jordan argued that the financial support is unlikely to reverse the deep-seated structural and financial challenges plaguing the state-owned sugar corporation.
Reflecting on his tenure, Jordan recalled the dire financial state of the corporation when the APNU+AFC coalition administration took office in May 2015.
“What we found there was an industry that was completely bankrupt,” Jordan stated. “A brand new government now wetting its feet had to find $12 billion in that short space of time—a space of seven months because we came in in May.”
Despite heavy state interventions spanning multiple administrations, Jordan maintained that production output has failed to improve enough to justify the massive scale of public spending. He emphasized that billions of taxpayer dollars continue to be poured into GuySuCo with heavily limited returns, leaving the industry entirely dependent on government lifelines.
According to Jordan, the unsustainable trajectory forced the previous administration to pursue aggressive structural reforms.
“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,” Jordan explained. “And that involved shedding some labor, reorganizing, modernizing some of the estates, and working with the estates.”
The former finance minister warned that without making these difficult, realistic decisions, taxpayers will remain burdened with funding perpetual bailouts for an industry detached from modern global economic realities. He pointed out that the structural shifts in international trade have permanently altered the profitability of Guyanese sugar.
“The days of sugar producing 300-something thousand tons are over, gone. And those days were the ‘sweet days’ when the European Union gave a favorable price,” Jordan noted. He concluded that Guyana can no longer rely on the historically preferential market conditions that once anchored the industry, making a full recovery under its current model highly unrealistic.
