Sugar industry in Limbo: World Bank
The Government’s support towards the sugar industry has not improved the competitiveness or profitability of the sector, The World Bank said.
The secular decline of the sugar sector since the 1990s has continued in terms of its share of agriculture gross domestic product (GDP) and of merchandise exports, the bank said.
It found that there were more than 20,000 active cane growers in the 1990s, but less than 12,000 after 2016.
The World Bank’s Fiji Public Review 2023 report said the international competitiveness of the industry declined rapidly in the past 30 years.
Labour and other resources have continued to move out of the sugar sector, said The World Bank.
It found that there were more than 20,000 active cane growers in the 1990s, but less than 12,000 after 2016.
Declined demand and rising international competition compounded the challenges that need to be urgently addressed by Fiji’s sugar sector, the bank said.
The World Bank has since indicated that the current trajectory of the sugar sector was unsustainable.
It said there was an urgent need to develop and implement a reform programme to fix the deep structural problems in the sugar economy.
The World Bank Recommended: -remove subsidies on fertiliser and weedicides, for cane growers, -replace the numerous forms of assistance to cane growers with more-generic assistance to rural households and regions,
-increase expenditure on rural transport infrastructure to reduce transport/logistics costs with benefits to be shared between all farmers,
-remove the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) monopoly to incentivise it to boost productivity.