Dear Editor,
The failure of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) to meet its 2025 sugar production target is not surprising—it is disappointing, costly, and entirely predictable. What is shocking, however, is the continued refusal of the Minister of Agriculture to accept responsibility for this ongoing national embarrassment. GUYSUCO has consistently revised its initial targets for every year it has set since taking Office in 2020 to the point that it even revised its revised targets and still failed to meet same.
As an Opposition Member of Parliament, I, Vinceroy Jordan, repeatedly warned in the National Assembly and in the public domain that GUYSUCO was bound to fail under the current approach. Those warnings were ignored, dismissed, and arrogantly brushed aside by the Minister, who instead chose propaganda over planning and excuses over execution.
Year after year, billions of taxpayers’ dollars are poured into GUYSUCO with little to show but missed targets, declining productivity, poor field management, labour shortages, factory inefficiencies, and weak leadership. The 2025 production shortfall is not an act of God—it is the direct result of poor policy choices, weak oversight, and a stubborn refusal to reform a failing model.
The Minister of Agriculture has consistently overpromised and under-delivered, offering rosy projections to the Guyanese people while the reality on the ground tells a very different story. Estate rehabilitation has been slow and ineffective, mechanization remains inadequate, workers remain demoralised, and management accountability is virtually non-existent. Yet, despite these glaring failures, the Minister continues to behave as though GUYSUCO’s collapse is someone else’s fault.
This Government cannot continue to treat the sugar industry as a bottomless pit for public funds while offering no clear, credible, or realistic recovery plan. Sugar workers, their families, and the wider economy deserve better than recycled excuses and empty assurances.
The failure to meet the 2025 sugar production target vindicates what we in the Opposition have been saying all along: without serious reform, competent management, and honest leadership, GUYSUCO will continue to fail. The Minister of Agriculture must stop deflecting blame, come clean with the nation, and take full responsibility for this failure.
The time for excuses is over. Accountability is long overdue.