-pinning hopes on Nand Persaud acquisition of Skeldon assets

There are unmistakable signs of jitteriness in the Corentyne business community. It extends across the business support organisations and into the businesses themselves. It has to do, almost entirely, with the perilous circumstances of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and what is now the virtual certainty that the Skeldon and Rose Hall factories will be closed.

It is easy to understand why the economic logic of making tough decisions about GuySuCo simply does not ‘wash’ in some communities. You have to be intimate with the industry and to be part of those communities whose fortunes it directly impacts to understand why, for some Guyanese, reconciliation with the closure of GuySuCo is a difficult pill to swallow.

When Stabroek Business visited areas of the Corentyne last week it was principally to listen to variants on the theme an economic slowdown….‘ business slow’, ‘business slow bad’, ‘not much happening’….it has been pretty much the same tune for several months. Tougher times are being seen as estate closures loom larger.

Peter Crawford, a No. 43 Village cattle farmer for more than 40 years is one of the purveyors of the sense of anxiety that hovers over the Corentyne. The fortunes of sugar, he says, are linked to every other conceivable sector of the Corentyne economy. In the halcyon days of sugar a day in the Port Mourant Market would yield returns from sales of around six hundred pounds of beef.