When the APNU+AFC Government came to power in 2015, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) appointed GuySuCo CEO Dr. Rajendra Singh greeted the new David Granger led administration with the surprising news that the Sugar Industry was virtually bankrupt.
In an editorial, “Sugar Crisis”, Stabroek News, June 15, 2015, the media entity stated, “While the party has remained silent on the virtual bankruptcy of GuySuCo declared last week by its handpicked CEO, Dr Rajendra Singh, the sugar unions and the majority of workers in the industry will know that the problems accreted over the last decade and have gathered a momentum that now threatens the survival of the heavily-indebted corporation. Instead of showing the leadership required over the last 10 years, the PPP/C opted for innumerable excuses and kept on returning to the same pool of its loyalists in a bid to return the sugar corporation to viability.”
Dr. Singh is back, front and center in the PPP’s ranks and this time he is heading to the United Kingdom (UK) to replace Hamley Case as High Commissioner. The APNU+AFC government was in the process of ‘right sizing’ the sugar industry and bringing it up to date with the current realities in the international market when the PPP was installed into office with sweet promises to reopen sugar estates.
The PPP has since abandoned those promises. For instance, Wales Sugar Estate has now been subsumed by the nascent Oil and Gas industry and more recently Enmore Sugar Estate has been felled by that same axe. A joint venture will see its Packaging Plant become a machine shop to service our Oil and Gas needs; the larger estate will go towards housing development. It is a strange turn of events, much like the appointment of Dr. Singh, as only recently GuySuCo’s CEO said that the ‘packaged sugar’ market was doing excellently. There is little doubt that Dr. Singh will bring his old magic to bear on this new mission.
More, In The Ring.
