BITTER NEWS ON SUGAR
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
July 4, 2004
THE FUTURE of Guyana's sugar industry and the welfare of more than the thousands of Guyanese workers directly and indirectly employed in this vital sector of the national economy, are integrally involved in this week's Caribbean Community Summit which gets underway in Grenada today.
Sugar has been and remains a vital foreign exchange earner and leading source of employment for this nation. Hence, the deep apprehension over an estimated massive 40 per cent slash in the price for sugar on the European market over the next three years.
Since other Caribbean sugar producers will also be affected, the need for a united and coordinated approach to prevent the region's worse fears from being realised, even as the rationalisation of production and other initiatives to maximise advantages are being pursued, is imperative.
It is to be assumed that the future of the sugar industry would also have engaged the attention of President Bharrat Jagdeo in his working paper on "the sustainable management and development" of the region's agricultural sector that he has prepared for this week's CARICOM Summit.
President Jagdeo, who has lead responsibility among Community leaders for the agricultural sector, is expected to benefit from a briefing on the outcome of Friday's pre-summit meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) before he and his regional colleagues put heads together on possible approaches in facing up to the challenge of the proposed significant cut by the European Union in the price for sugar imports.
As Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados, who has lead responsibility for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), told a meeting of regional technocrats last week, affected producers would have to adopt a national and rational approach in dealing with an industry for which there remains a large commonality of interest in its future.
The truth is, not only do CARICOM states share much in common with respect to the sugar industry. This is also the case in fisheries and other maritime resources.
Therefore, the CARICOM leaders also have an obligation to advance at their Grenada Summit the decision they took in principle some sixteen months ago in Port-of-Spain for the development of a common regional fisheries policy.
The tension that has developed since then between the administrations in Bridgetown and Port-of-Spain over fishing rights and the wider and more critical issue of maritime boundary delimitation would have to be overcome in the pursuit of the commendable objective of a regional mechanism to assess, manage and develop the fisheries resources of the region.