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Reply to "GuySuCo gains access to new markets in Italy, Canada, USA – Board"

Drugb posted:
 

The problem was not created by the PPP. It existed back to the colonial days where an antiquated system was perpetuated through the 28 years of PNC and 24 of PPP and propped up by the EU subsidies. Now that the subsidies are gone, the PNC has to determine the way forward.  This is what they promised when in opposition, now we are waiting for them to deliver.

Bookers was a highly profitable company when it was nationalized. In fact its Guyana operations generated so much cash that it emerged as a sizeable UK company after decades of minting money from its British Guiana operations.

The EU told Jagdeo to shift to something other than sugar, and even gave him millions to assist sugar workers to move to other activities. Even as Jagdeo screamed that the UK was betraying Guyana by allowing the EU to cut its prices paid by more than 1/3,  Jagdeo spent millions to build a new factory.

Lots of people told Jagdeo that expanding the sugar industry was an error and that he should begin a gradual shift from bulk raw sugar to more value added activities, and/or to other crops.

Jagdeo screamed that he was an expert. When folks told him to get a Australian or Brazilian company to build the factory, given his ill advised insistence that he should, Jagdeo found some fly by night bunch of charlatans from China. Most likely because he and his buddies received bribes, which neither the Brazilians, nor the Australians were going to do.

Guysuco's costs, already high, soared, just as the price tumbled.  Guysuco became a huge drain. It is now the recipient of over US$600 million of bailouts and is also hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Even Jagdeo now admits that the PPP bears much of the blame for Guysuco's predicament.  Why did he expand sugar when the EU was cutting prices, and it was obvious that Guyana couldn't complete in the global markets?

FM
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