By Christopher Ram
Introduction
Paul Cheong, appointed Chief Executive Officer of GuySuCo just over a year ago, has been pitching a vision for the sugar industry that sounds remarkably familiar: more investment in machinery, expanded packaging facilities, upgraded logistics, drone technology, and greater mechanisation to make up for a shrinking labour force. It all sounds promising: until we go behind the numbers.
Mr. Cheong does not come to the job with a record of high-level managerial experience in agribusiness or complex state enterprises. In fact, his most recent outing was as Chair of the Private Sector Commission, during a period marked by accelerating dysfunction and declining public credibility in that organisation. That track record does little to inspire confidence in his ability to navigate the far more challenging terrain of GuySuCo.
While he cannot be blamed for the more structural issues at the Corporation, he does not escape responsibility for some of the poor results. Undeterred by reality, he now has even more billions to be poured into capital works, as though the problem were a lack of equipment rather than failed leadership and flawed strategy.
Dream on
This is a rerun of the same movie. New CEO promising transformation but leaving a final scene worthy of cinematic metaphor: not a triumphant turnaround, but a graveyard of expensive, inappropriate equipment. Rerun the cycle. If this is Paul Cheong’s plan for GuySuCo’s revival, it is not a business strategy – it is wishful thinking dressed up in technical jargon. This journey into fantasyland costs the country huge sums. According to Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha, since the return of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) to power in 2020, over $28 billion to improve productivity across the sector, including $13.3 billion for 2025 alone. That is a staggering number and suggests caution. But then Cheong was on the PPP/C list that had the crazy idea of reopening the shuttered estates.
Mr. Cheong speaks of progress: of drones, of predictive maintenance, of Brazilian partnerships. But GuySuCo’s past is littered with announcements just like these, each one arriving with a price tag and disappearing into the black hole of unmeasured outcomes. He cannot explain what portion of the 2025 Government subsidy has been spent and the expected returns. But he sails on: no one to account to.
GuySuCo does not suffer from a lack of equipment. It suffers from a lack of accountability, transparency, and leadership grounded in agronomic and financial reality. Every season of mismanagement, every dollar wasted on ill-timed or ill-considered machinery, moves us further from viability and deeper into a pit of public debt.
At what point does a government say “enough”? When will taxpayers, especially the unemployed, underpaid, and underserved in other sectors – demand a stop to this endless bail-out of an industry whose cost of production exceeds the world market price by a factor of two times? To put this in stark terms: it would be cheaper to import sugar than to continue producing it under these circumstances.
Not my first run
This is not the first time I have spoken out on the state of the sugar industry.
In 2010, I wrote a five-part series titled GuySuCo Needs Drastic Surgery to Ensure Survival, dissecting the corporation’s finances, its bloated costs, and the strategic failures behind the Skeldon debacle. Then Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud took objection. Then in 2015, I appeared before the Parvattan Commission of Inquiry, urging a rational, evidence-based approach to reform – one that acknowledged the industry’s structural weaknesses rather than papering over them with politics.
And here we are again in 2025 – fifteen years later – confronting the same old story: poor decision-making, political interference, the appointment of the wrong people, and the removal of those who dared to speak the truth or ask the hard questions.
GuySuCo has become a theatre of dysfunction. The PPP/C government, which campaigned on the promise to reopen shuttered estates, has in fact overseen their further decay. That promise was never rooted in economic realism – it was a political slogan, not a viable plan. What followed has been an even greater politicisation of the industry, with President Irfaan Ali taking a direct hand in operations and appointments. Square pegs have been forced into triangular holes, and capable professionals have been sidelined in favour of loyalists. Promises are recycled. Excuses are reissued. Capital is burned. And accountability is nowhere in sight. Losses mount.
Conclusion
The sugar industry once built this country. It was the backbone of our economy, our employment, and our exports. But it must not now become the millstone around our necks – dragging down our national finances, distorting our development priorities, and draining our public resources.
But it secures the PPP/C electoral support. That is the only thing that matters.