Rahael: We will save $1b a year

AGRICULTURE MINISTER John Rahael declared that because Government bit the Caroni bullet which its UNC predecessor dodged, Trinidad and Tobago will not pay $1billion annually to keep the beleaguered company afloat. Addressing a consultation for a quality-based payment system for sugar-cane at the Rudranath Capildeo Learning Resource Centre in Couva yesterday, Rahael recalled that Government gave Caroni (1975) Limited a $600 million subvention to keep it operational until September and from 1996 to 2001, Caroni’s operating losses skyrocketed from $97 million to $367 million. “No government, no country can continue to subsidise any industry whose losses are occurring at that kind of rate. If we were to continue like that, in the next two or three years, the subvention might have been $1 billion a year. I am sure you do not want that because you too are taxpayers and especially if there is an opportunity to turn that around,” he told the assembled cane farmers.  Rahael said with the VSEP for Caroni’s monthly and daily-paid workers costing $900 million and the debt since 1996 standing at $2 billion, the entire restructuring process would cost Government $3.5 billion. “There is no way it could not be business as usual because it would have meant the closure and the death of the sugar industry,” he stated grimly.

Reiterating Government’s commitment to the sugar industry, the Minister said: “Caroni was involved in so many different industries, that the sugar industry was just a component of what Caroni was doing. What is required is to make the sugar industry independent of everything else, so that we will be able to give the sugar industry the opportunity to survive. So that all the losses that Caroni was incurring with respect to the other activities, will not reflect on the sugar industry.” Rahael said the creation of the Sugar Manufacturing Company of TT to exclusively handle sugar production while farmers controlled cane cultivation and production were key components of the restructuring efforts which were discussed with “all stakeholders”.