GUYANA-FINANCE-Parliament gives the green light for an additional billion dollars for the sugar company.

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GEORGETOWN, Guyana, The Guyana parliament has approved an additional one billion dollars (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) billion to provide resources for operational expenses at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) amidst concerns by the opposition that the state-owned company has racked up debt in excess of GUY$12 billion so far this year.

Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha told legislators on Monday that the funds would be used to rehabilitate critical areas in the factories while enhancing and expanding cultivation in the cane fields.

As a result, the Albion Sugar Estate will receive $363 million, the Blairmont estate $76 million, and the Rose Hall estate $561 million, and among the items listed to be procured are five 30-inch disc plows and five tilling harrows for the Rose Hall estate.

Mustapha said that under the previous coalition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) government, an estimated 23,000 hectares of cane lands were abandoned due to the closure of Wales, Rose Hall, Enmore, and Skeldon estates.

“We were able to put back approximately 2,000 hectares which are already under cultivation at Rose Hall, and we will continue to move apace with the work we have undertaken. Hopefully, by the second crop, 2023, Rose Hall can come into operation,” Mustapha said.

He said the government was successful at employing about 1,500 sugar workers who were dismissed when the doors to the factories were forcefully shut.

“So, these monies are critical funds to rehab GuySuCo, and we are seeing now, because of the flood that we encountered in 2021, a lot of the prime estates like Albion… many cultivation areas were damaged. Now we are retooling and trying to get enough cultivation to have enough cane and increased production.”

But opposition legislator, Volda Lawrence, said the loss-making GuySuCo had already chalked up losses of GUY$12 billion as of October.

“Are you saying that in your planning for 2022, you are asking us for this money to do all these things that were in the field, etc., that it wasn’t in your plan? So if it wasn’t in your plan, what type of budgeting (are you) doing?” she told legislators.

She said the company had also received this year supplementary funding in tranches of GUY$3.541 billion and GUY$3 billion.

“What are we doing with all this extra money if you have money to cover these expenses?” she asked.

Her position found support from the Shadow Agriculture Minister Khemraj Ramjattan, who also queried why that corporation needed an additional one billion dollars.

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