Speaking generally on the state of the sugar industry, Mai said that the stakeholders need to take a long and hard look at ways to reduce the cost of sugar production even further.
His premise is that world sugar prices aren't rebounding fast enough to allow the farmers and the millers a reasonable rate of return.
Here are those comments:
Hon. Jose Mai, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, Enterprise
"The sugar industry has to go through some serious reforms, reforms across the entire industry from farmers to millers to transportation overseas. We cannot continue with the industry the way it is today; it is going to crash; we cannot continue to grow sugar cane at $63 per ton up to farm gate when I am being paid $50 per ton or $54 per ton. Nobody will survive with those costs; nobody can survive with the cost of operations that ASR has. They have some tremendous costs which means that we have to get efficient across the entire industry from the farm all the way to Europe. We have to see; we have to make a conscious effort to reduce the cost of producing sugar cane and sugar in this country. We are prepared to sit down with ASR and to find ways and means with which we can help to reduce cost and we have to sit down with the cane farmers too and ensure that they can be more efficient. The government has a key role to play in fixing the sugar roads. There is no way we can even begin the crop right now with the deplorable conditions of the sugar roads we have inherited. It is a sad situation for the cane farmers, so we have a lot of work to do in the sugar industry."
