Canefarmers need incentives – Gavoka
THE 2021/2022 National Budget needs to have incentives which aim to boost the confidence of sugarcane farmers and get the harvesting going.
These were the sentiments of SODELPA leader Viliame Gavoka when asked about incentives for the sugar industry in the upcoming budget.
Mr Gavoka said the effects would almost be immediate as during harvesting time of cane, the income and flow of the money within a community was almost instantaneous.
“As you know, sugar, the way it multiplies across the community is better than just about any other economic activity in the country,” he said.
“Even the farmers are reluctant to do so because of this $54.36 a tonne. Why don’t you leave the confidence of the farmers and pay them more?”
Mr Gavoka added charging farmers $54.36 a tonne at a time like this was resulting in them being agitated and refusing to harvest the cane.
“So please give confidence to the farmers to harvest the cane and if it’s a matter of forecasting a better price do so,” he said.
“What we need is to inject confidence and get the harvesting going. We cannot be saying that we are doing well if you are harvesting below two million tonnes, and it just keeps getting worse.”
He said the farmers needed an indication of what the price was going to be and it needed to be a lot better than what they had currently.
National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad echoed Mr Gavoka’s statement with the sugar industry and the incentives which needed to be in place in the upcoming budget to support it.
He said the Government had a wonderful opportunity to ensure that before the farmers harvested sugarcane they are given a better delivery payment.
“I hope that in the budget, for the sake of the economies in the Western, in the North, and providing stability that in the budget, the Minister for Economy is going to allocate, a 60 per cent delivery payment out of the guaranteed price of $85, I think that would be a very good way.”
Prof Prasad said 60 per cent of the poverty-stricken people were living in the rural areas and more people would have gone into agriculture and other areas.
“Putting money into the sugar industry will also rejuvenate all the other non-sugar crop sectors, people’s income, all these exchange of crops, vegetables, kava, this is linked directly to the income from the sugar industry,” he said.
“I hope that they do that in the budget, that’s one more opportunity left, otherwise, they’re going to kill the sugar industry further.”