Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram No. 33
When criticism meets political pressure, grand schemes emerge from thin air
Introduction
Within just a few weeks, Guyana has been treated to two competing visions for GuySuCo. First, President Ali’s appointee as CEO, Paul Cheong promises salvation through drone technology and Brazilian partnerships – focused on making sugar work. Next comes President Ali’s vision of GuySuCo as a “hub of rural development” – many of them towns – extending into rice, cassava, and livestock – essentially admitting sugar alone cannot work.
The contradiction is telling. One vision assumes sugar can be saved through technology. The other requires diversification – or more accurately, diversion – into entirely different sectors. Both appeared as reactive responses to pressure rather than genuine planning. Yet they point in fundamentally different directions, revealing an administration with no coherent strategy whatsoever.
The trigger: Reactive announcements
Cheong’s technological pitch emerged directly in response to my critical analysis published in this newspaper in June. Within days of “Sugar Dreams and Capital Nightmares” appearing, Cheong felt compelled to respond with his vision of transformation.
Ali’s diversification scheme was unveiled weeks later at the Enmore Martyrs’ commemoration – a setting unsuitable for accountability for the PPP/C’s and his own administration’s failures. Faced with explaining why production has collapsed after nearly five years in office, Ali chose to pivot to fantasies about GuySuCo’s future transformation.
Neither vision emerged from planning sessions or stakeholder consultations. Both were hasty responses: Cheong defending against criticism, Ali deflecting from decades of failures.
What both visions completely lack
More telling than what these visions promise is what they lack: any known planning whatsoever. Neither has provided clear objectives, implementation timelines, cost projections, risk assessments, management structures, marketing strategies, or financial projections.
Nothing. For an administration with nearly five years to develop a coherent GuySuCo strategy, this absence of substance is breathtaking. This is governance by public pronouncements designed for all the wrong announcements and certainly not solid strategies for results.
The logical absurdity is staggering. We have wasted hundreds of billions on GuySuCo even when we had actual plans – flawed though they were. To expect better results with no plan and no execution sounds like insanity. Yet both are proposing grand visions plucked from thin air, unencumbered by planning or realistic assessment.
Cheong’s recycled technology
Cheong’s vision reads like a Silicon Valley pitch: drone technology, predictive maintenance, Brazilian partnerships, new dryers, packaging machines, and “greater mechanisation.” Yet these are hardly revolutionary concepts for GuySuCo – similar technological promises have been made repeatedly over the years, with mixed results at best.
The pattern is familiar: new management arrives promising transformation through the latest technology, whether it’s modern factory equipment, improved field techniques, or partnerships with international experts. Each time, the focus remains on capital expenditure and technological fixes rather than addressing fundamental issues of management, planning, and market viability.
Rather than acknowledging this history of failed technological promises and seeking proven leadership like former successful chairpersons Vic Oditt and Ronald Alli who understood both the industry and sound management principles, Cheong retreats to the same playbook of technological solutions that have disappointed before.
Ali’s trademark diversion
Ali’s pronouncement reveals his characteristic response to failure: pivot to even grander schemes that ignore present realities. Rather than explain why sugar production has collapsed, he declared GuySuCo should expand into rice, livestock, agro-processing, and fabrication services.
This is not a diversification strategy – it was Ali’s trademark diversion from accountability. His approach treats GuySuCo as a political instrument rather than an economic enterprise. The audacity is breathtaking. A complex organisation producing sugar at twice world market prices, struggling with basic operations, is somehow going to become competitive in multiple unrelated sectors?
The track record: Five times the opportunity
Before accepting either vision as credible, examine the track record. The PPP/C has governed for 27 of the past 32 years versus just 5 years and 3 months for APNU+AFC.
This means the PPP/C has been in charge of GuySuCo for more than five times longer than the Coalition. They have had the opportunity to implement technological solutions more than five times, pursue diversification, and achieve the very goals they now promise. The PPP/C tried technological solutions before. They attempted diversification before. They announced grand plans before. Each time: more money spent, more targets missed, more excuses offered.
Ali specifically has had nearly five years to deliver on reopening estates. The results: “catastrophic” production levels and a corporation whose “very future is under real threat.”
We have been this way before
Every element has been promised before. The 2010 Turnaround Plan promised 400,000 tonnes by 2013, mechanisation and transformation. The Skeldon Project promised technological revolution. Previous diversification attempts promised GuySuCo would become more than sugar. Each time, grand announcements without substance. Each time, the same result: failure dressed up in new rhetoric.
Conclusion
Both visions represent competing versions of the same delusion, made worse by their fundamental contradiction and complete absence of planning. When the CEO and President offer incompatible visions within weeks of each other, both triggered by external pressure, it reveals an administration that has lost control of its narrative, let alone its strategy.
Next week: Part 2 examines what this fool’s gamble has cost Guyana while public services crumble and opportunities are squandered.