Rahael gives sugar industry good chance of surviving

BETTER sugarcane quality and a more efficient factory have been identified as the key ingredients for the survival of the sugar industry in Trinidad and Tobago. And Agriculture Minister John Rahael expressed his confidence in the industry as he spoke to reporters yesterday after touring a series of career-training booths at the Metal Industries Company compound in Usine Ste Madeleine. The mini-expo, organised by the Caroni Management Unit and the Employers Consultative Authority, featured booths from the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Technology (TTIT), Youth Training and Employment Partnership Programme, (YTEPP) and the Agriculture Ministry.

Rahael, who also expressed “pleasure” at the “tremendous” turnout of former Caroni (1975) Ltd workers, said the ailing sugar industry stood a “very good chance of survival,” now that the restructuring process was being allowed to take place without interference by “recalcitrant elements.” “The Government is giving the sugar industry an opportunity to survive,” Rahael said. He added that a potential upgrade of the Usine Ste Madeleine sugar factory was also being explored by the Sugar Manufacturing Company of Trinidad and Tobago. “The new company will now look at this possibility, what type of upgrading the factory needs and to what extent would the upgrade be done since the whole idea is to make the factory much more efficient.” However, he pointed out that sugarcane quality was also a necessary ingredient for the industry’s survival, reiterating that this held the “unenviable” record for cane-to-sugar ratio among sugar producing countries. “Our ratio is 13 tonnes of cane to one tonne of sugar while other countries have a ratio of between eight or nine tonnes of cane per tonne of sugar,” Rahael said.