R GuySuCo privatisation parently -Harmon

would have made proposals would have to resubmit them to the unit, which would then see the process through.

“They would now have to resubmit to the committee. This is now the entity that is formed for this purpose and therefore everybody have to submit their proposals to the special purposes unit,” Harmon explained.

“Those were preliminary steps. There was no conclusion or conclusiveness of that process [led by Kirton]. That was to identify persons who were interested and to be able to weed out those who did not have the capacity. So these people will now come to the Special Purposes Unit and it will make it easier for them to access their viability so that Kirton’s job, it is finished. The special purposes unit will take charge and process these into finality,” he added, while pointing out that as for Kirton, “He has no further role.”

In May of this year, government announced plans to “scale down” GuySuCo to three estates with three factories that would produce sugar for domestic needs and foreign markets, while divesting the company’s remaining assets.

Reading from the ‘State Paper on the Future of the Sugar Industry,’ Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder had told the National Assembly that under the plan, GuySuCo would aim to produce 147,000 tonnes of sugar annually from the AlbionRose Hall, Blairmont and Uitvlugt-Wales estates. He noted that the Enmore factory will be closed at the end of 2017 when all cane would be harvested and the East Coast estates would be earmarked for diversification.

Under the planned amalgamation of existing estates, which has already been set in motion, cane from Wales would be reassigned to the Uitvlugt factory. The Wales Estate was closed at the end of the crop in December 2016. Also, cultivation at the Albion and Rose Hall estates would be merged, but the Rose Hall factory would be closed at the end of this year. Some lands will be made available for diversification purposes.