Minister Singh lays out Rakiraki Mill plans
THE Minister for Sugar and Multi-Ethnic Affairs, Charan Jeath Singh, has plans to develop the Rakiraki Mill that will include a refinery. “Plans are there to have a refinery together with the mill. It will be making raw sugar and then refining sugar,” Minister Singh said. “Once the Rakiraki Mill finalises, we can go back to India, we have spoken to a number of companies that can-do brand-new mills, efficient mills,” he said.
Minister Singh, who was in India earlier this month, said information gathered during the visit has been relayed to the Fiji Sugar Corporation board.
“The board will now analyse to see which company they can use to set up a new mill. Once the FSC board finalises on the cost of the building and the machines, they will come back to the Ministry to work on the funding of the project,” he said.
Out of the two companies that the Ministry was in talks with, Minister Singh said, one of them was ready to come on board as a joint venture as it already operates four sugar mills in India.
He said they were looking at having the mill crush 450,000 tonnes of cane in a five-month crushing season.
“If we increase our cane production to 3.5 million tonnes, then we are looking at setting up an ethanol plant in Ba. Last year Ba mill encountered a lot of problems. We are bringing in eight engineers from India, who will come and look at the mills, be part of the team of current engineers here so that they fix the Rarawai Mill and make it more efficient,” Minister Singh added.
Increased cane production will need more farmers to get back to sugar farming and the Minister has pleaded with landowners, whose land stands idle, to lease it out to people who are interested in doing cane farming.
He has assured that if there are any difficulties in paying for the lease, the Government has some programs, whereby it can pay the premium and leases as well on behalf of the farmers.
On labour shortage, Minister Singh said, “We are looking at bringing labourers from Bangladesh, these labourers can be used by multiple farmers”.
“The Immigration Department has exempted the $3000 bond per labourer.”