By Sase Singh ?INTRODUCTIONThe sugar belt still has much value creation opportunities left within its jurisdiction, but until the key decision makers get it, we will never be able to make independent and courageous business decisions that can turn around GuySuCo.? I thought it was extremely pusillanimous of the?Parvatan?Commission to recommend the easiest of decisions – privatization and divestment; this is nothing but a cop-out from doing the right thing.The business strategy in the sugar belt should be the?advancement of a business solution in a very financially unstable marketplace,Cheap NFL Jerseys Store, but with a mindset that is fully aware that GuySuCo remains one of the principal foreign currency generators for the nation and the largest employer.What the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) did not do is to clearly establish a path of getting the sugar belt back to normal,Wholesale Jerseys Online, thus laying the groundwork for future recovery. Recovery in the sugar belt is a real possibility,Jerseys NFL China, but it has to be led and professionally managed.What the CoI did was propose a recommendation that was going to allow private investors to walk in and harvest the wealth of the industry and then exit the theatre leaving thousands of broken lives in their rear view mirror.? I am happy that the Granger government has re-emphasized its commitment to the industry and debunked these recommendations from the CoI Report.The bottom line remains the high cost per estates. If depreciation is included, the cost for both the Enmore and Skeldon increases significantly because of?the hefty depreciation charge for their new packaging plant and sugar mill respectively.? Therefore to get a more uniform comparator, we excluded depreciation.These facts illustrate that Wales is the second worst “cost-performing” estate in the industry with one of the oldest factories in the system.? It cost an average of US$0.30 per lb to harvest the cane at both Wales and Uitvlugt, the highest in the industry compared to US$0.19 per lb at Albion.On the other hand, if one observes the factory operations,Jerseys Wholesale, it cost US$0.09 to grind a pound of sugar at the Wales Factory compared to US$0.11 at the Uitvlugt Factory.? This situation was confirmed by evaluating the main productivity indicator for Wales vs. Uitvlugt called TSH (tonnes sugar produced per hectares).In 2014, the TSH was 7.0 tonnes sugar produced from every hectare of cultivated land at Wales compared to 6.3 tonnes at Uitvlugt.?There is also a school of thought that the privately cultivated sugarcane at Wales Estate can be transported to Uitvlugt and that this should contribute to less downtime for the Uitvlugt Factory,Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys, making it more efficient.I believe this is a false promise and it will contribute to private farmers eventually abandoning this project, to the detriment of Uitvlugt Estate.? We have to recognize that at the Albion Factory it cost just US$0.04 to grind the cane to produce a pound of sugar (compared to US$0.11 at Uitvlugt). ?The game plan to save GuySuCo is clearly – move to the east.In a report submitted to the CDB, GuySuCo stated that over 88 percent of the lands at Wales are considered as high-grade lands compared to only 47 percent at Uitvlugt.But at Uitvlugt, over 20 percent of the land is laid out in a form that is mechanically friendly while at Wales that percentage is ZERO. This leads one to wonder why no attempt was made at Wales over the years to make the land user-friendlier for mechanical harvesting.? Was there a plan all along to close Wales?One can conclude that for decades Wales was deliberately being sidelined.?This did not start in 2015 under the Coalition Government; this started since the late 1980’s under the PNC Government, when Booker Tate returned to Guyana under a management contract and the master plan continued for all of the 23 years of the PPP Government.The steam generators at Wales are over 60 years old and are extremely unreliable and obsolete. ?Wales Factory was identified along with the Factories at Diamond and LBI to have been taken out of service decades ago, but a dangerous game was played with Wales by spending billions on patchwork to keep it barely alive for decades.So when you see politicians talking about some illusionary US$50 million from India to rehabilitate Wales, you wonder for how long more will a few want to keep the “masses as jackasses” as Alexander Hamilton once said when he was part of the team that framed the US Constitution?That US$50 million was for the entire sugar industry and will serve a more useful purpose on the Berbice estate,Cheap Jerseys 2