Sase Singh is the newest contributor to Kaieteur News. Beginning today and continuing every week, he would be writing on issues that form the conversation point among many a table or. Today he will look at sugar, the commodity that was once king.The relevance of Uitvlugt estate to sugar by Sase Singh.When one reflects back to 1976 and to the whole act of nationalization of the sugar industry, one can imagine how a people felt then – as Nehru so aptly put it “a tryst with destiny.” Sugar was supposed to be the backbone of the economy and even though it literally collapsed by 1988, after some carefully crafted interventions under the Hoyte administration and continued under the Jagan government,cheap jerseys from china, it rebounded by 2002 with a production of 331,Deion Sanders Falcons Jersey UK,067 tonnes.What has happen to sugar since 2002 is a classic case of how not to run a sugar industry. This also reinforces why politicians must leave the industry to professionals.As a prerequisite – we must level with the people! Why the 2010-2014 audited reports for Guysuco was not laid in the Parliament as yet remains a serious concern for me. This is a defect inherited from the Jagdeo/Ramotar administration. It is expected that the current administration will urgently address this defect in good corporate governance as soon as the Parliament is reconvened.What is quite evidential was that Guysuco was managed in a manner to perpetuate the very political survival of the PPP rather than produce sugar most efficiently.But a new day dawned on May 11, 2015 and to whom much is given, much is expected. The 16,000 workers in the sugar belt and the 69,000 who directly and indirectly feed from the industry expect a metamorphosis in how the industry is managed.Sugar has to be managed as a private sector business in distress. Much bolder and more progressive policy initiatives are expected for the sugar belt. When the PPP arrived in Government, Guysuco contributed some 18% of GDP. By the time the PPP lost office, Guysuco was contributing below five per cent of GDP. This is clear evidence of what the PPP did to the sugar industry.What should we do with Uitvlugt estate to better preserve the long-term economic life of the sugar industry?Why Uitvlugt? According to Professor Clive Thomas, the “sugar yield for this estate was 2.85 TSH? in 2013”.? TSH is tons sugar per hectare of land harvested. This pales in comparison to estates like Albion where the sugar yield was 5.43 TSH in 2013. TSH is one of the principal performance measures of a sugar estate, The higher the number – the higher the yield; the more productive the estate; the higher the chance of profitability. From this example, Albion is almost twice as productive when compared to Uitvlugt.For the record, the sugar industry in the 1970s had productivity of – 5.81 TSH,Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale, in the 1980’s – 4.71 TSH, in the 1990s – 5.64 TSH and in the 2000s – 5.91 TSH. Even in the colonial days the sugar yield in the industry was around 8.40 TSH. But the data clearly highlights that Uitvlugt is on a planet all by itself when it comes to efficiently producing sugar.COST OF PRODUCTION – UITVLUGTFrom Professor Thomas’s sugar series in the press, he alluded to the fact that in 2012, the unit cost per pound of sugar produced at Uitvlugt was US$0.43.? This was estimated to have increased to US$0.57 in 2013. That was in an era when Guysuco was being paid an average of some US$0.31 per lb for its sugar. But to compound matters, the cost of production did not materially improve in 2014. Guysuco earned ONLY US$0.21 per lb for sugar exports.This is no joke – the taxpayers of Guyana were subsidizing sugar produced at Uitvlugt by some US$0.22 per pound, more than what the country earned from sugar sales.Yet the decision makers under the Jagdeo/Ramotar administration failed to offer any tangible turnaround plan.In light of the facts, our option are limited on Uitvlugt?THE MERITS OF PLANTATION TYPE AGRICULTURE AT UITVLUGTFor years, the terms of trade with respect to table foods vs sugar have been very advantageous. For over a decade now, it made absolute sense to switch out of sugar at Uitvlugt into plantation scale table food production (cash crops, fruits and vegetables) but yet this was not done. In the Caribbean,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, the demand for higher value fresh foods (chopped and packaged fruits and vegetables) has increased significantly.What did we do to penetrate those markets? Very little! Today, the Caribbean imports quite conservatively, over US$2 billion in packaged fruits and vegetables and Guyana is still a small player in that market although we have the potential to dominate. Fresh foods are being imported into the Car