Barbados looking at sugar reactivation

Sinckler dropped the information during a Barbados Investor Forum last Monday at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, St.

Ann’s.

The forum was hosted by ANSA Merchant Bank, a subsidiary of the ANSA McAL Group and attended by the Governor of the Barbados Central Bank Dr DeLisle Worrell.

Sinckler said the Government of Barbados is “reforming” the sugar industry and will have to finance it to the tune of BDS$100 million, including BDS$52 million of “pure debt.” He said the reformation will include the upgrading of two existing sugar factories and the government will partner with the West Indies Sugar Trading Company (WISTCO) to grow and market direct consumption sugar.

Sinckler said the government wanted to reverse the current arrangement where the country exports the sugar it produces and imports to meet local demand to an arrangement where it reduces imports of sugar, in the process saving foreign exchange, and produces to the level of current demand at higher prices.

“In fact, we have imperical statistics to show that Barbadians pay as much as $1.20 more per kilogramme for sugar produced in Barbados than they would for the cheaper sugar coming from outside of Barbados.” The Finance Minister said Barbados is aiming to increase production to 25-30,000 tonnes of sugar for domestic consumption and sell the excess as specialised “Plantation Reserve” sugar, a brand created following the forging of the WISTCO partnership in 2008, to Caricom markets as well as to “high value” importers in the United States; United Kingdom; the Middle East and even as far away as China.

He added that the Barbados government had retained PricewaterhouseCoopers to design a restructuring plan for the “operational end” of the sugar industry - the Barbados Agricultural Marketing Company (BAMC); the Barbados Agricultural Credit Trust, the overall holding company for the whole venture and the Barbados Sugarcane Corporation,which, he said was the company which is supposed to drive the entire reform process. He said the plan is to bring all these entities into one company, create efficiencies and move it into “an accellerated implementation.” Barbados’ Minister of Agriculture has been quoted as saying that the direct consumption concept, “has created BD$1.98 million (US$990,000) in added- value to the industry above the world sugar price in 2013. And while there has only been a limited amount of direct consumption sugar available to date, the success of the brand across multiple countries forms the basis for expanding direct consumption sugar production and creating a genuinely profitable industry in the future.”