Dear Editor,
In the sugar-coated corridors of Guyana’s state-run industry, where chronic failures have long outproduced actual sugar, the latest press release from GuySuCo—dated March 7, 2026—arrives like a carnival barker hawking a three-legged horse as a thoroughbred. Rose Hall and Albion estates, we are told, smashed their weekly sugar target, churning out 2,457 tonnes against a modest 1,989-tonne goal, an “excess” of 468 tonnes hailed as the “highest production figures since reopening.”
The Tonnes Cane to Tonnes Sugar (TCTS) ratio of 12.53 is brandished as proof of “improving operational efficiency,” credited to government-led teamwork and communication wizardry. Yet this boast, dripping with self-congratulation, crumbles under even the gentlest scrutiny. It is not triumph; it is tomfoolery—a crass exercise in duplicity that publishes a meager increase absent any benchmark figures, daring us to applaud mediocrity while the fog of structural rot billows unchecked.
Let us first pierce the veil with arithmetic, the great equalizer of political spin. The release coyly omits total cane crushed, but the TCTS ratio hands us the key: 2,457 tonnes of sugar multiplied by 12.53 yields approximately 30,800 tonnes of cane processed across the two estates for the week. This beats the implied target (1,989 × 12.53 ≈ 24,930 cane tonnes) by about 5,870 tonnes—a 23.5% overrun, to be sure.
But pause here: in an industry where estates like these once dreamed of 5,000+ tonnes of sugar weekly at peak, this is not a surge; it is a sputter. GuySuCo’s annual cane target hovers around 1.2 million tonnes per crop, meaning one week’s 30,800 tonnes barely registers as a footnote. Celebrating it as a milestone exposes not progress, but the poverty of ambition—a low bar scraped in the dirt after years of idling factories, crop shortfalls, and production routinely mired below world standards.
Worse still is the inverted reality of that TCTS figure. A 12.53 ratio whispers inefficiency where the release shouts improvement. In the global sugar game, efficient mills boast 9-11 TCTS (translating to 10-12% sucrose recovery); Guyana’s pre-collapse benchmarks under better management often hit 10-11. At 12.53, Rose Hall and Albion are extracting perhaps 8-9%—mediocre at best, a limp handshake from adequacy.
No trendline graces the page, no year-over-year comparison, no peer estate data from Enmore or Skeldon. “Highest since reopening,” they crow, unwittingly admitting the baseline is a chasm dug by prior debacles: repeated target misses, cost overruns exceeding GY$10 billion in subsidies last year alone, and sugar prices stubbornly above world benchmarks (GuySuCo’s breakeven ~US$0.35/lb vs. market ~US$0.20/lb). This is not momentum; it is the industry gasping through a ventilator, subsidized to stagger rather than sprint.
The rhythm of this release pulses with political opportunism, a major PR stunt timed for maximum fog. Why expend scarce funds—amid labour shortages and factory plagues—to trumpet an infinitesimal gain? Because optics trump outputs in the game of governance narrative. It distracts from the depravity: estates bleeding cash, workers toiling without wage parity to productivity, and a sector that imports sugar despite vast arable lands.
The first shift of 2026 is promised to run until May, they say, as if continuity were a coup rather than a baseline expectation. Staff are patted on the back for “engagement,” yet no whisper of hectare yields, labour hours, or cost-per-tonne metrics to validate the hype. It is duplicity by omission, a sleight of hand that lets a single week’s uptick eclipse the continuum of failure.
We see through the fog, GuySuCo. This is not stewardship; it is sleight-of-hand showmanship, peddling a mediocre milestone as revival while the mills grind ever slower under unaddressed rot. True progress would flaunt benchmarks, not bury them—comparative TCTS trends, breakeven costs slashed below market, hectare yields rivaling Brazil or India. Instead, we get confetti for clearing a hurdle you set ankle-high. Let this be the call-out: cease the charade, publish the full ledger, and lift the industry from futility. Guyana’s sugar sector deserves candor, not confection.
Yours truly,
Hemdutt Kumar
