And while the cane farmers have been generating goodwill in the city - they're still locked in that interminable dispute with BSI.
Earlier in the news, we showed you remarks from the management of ASR/BSI on the impasse. Part of the conversation focused on the views of the millers that if they agree to the counter-proposal from the BSCFA on a new revenue-sharing mechanism, they have to transfer 20 million dollars in value to this group of farmers.
The millers say that this proposal would drive them to bankruptcy, and today, the media asked ASR's Vice-President of International Relations to explain that calculation. He said that what the BSCFA farmers are asking for is for them to subsidize the production cost of higher-quality sugar. Here's how he explained why, in their opinion, that is an unfair request:
Malcolm "Mac" McLachlan, VP, International Relations, ASR/BSI
"If we looked at 60/40 on gross revenue - so that means farmers not contributing to any of the ex-mill costs; that's the freighting, the handling charges, and the manufacturing allowance to make direct consumption sugars. All of the calculations that go in to make it a net strip value - that's what it means. It's the value of the sugar once you've taken out the costs associated with exporting that sugar and producing higher-value sugars, direct consumption sugars. If you do away with all those charges, that's where the figure comes from that it would mean that the mill would be subsidizing the farmers by 20 million dollars a year. Now, I've explained already how impractical and impossible that would be because the mill has just completed five years of consecutive losses. So, no business in their right mind would turn around and say, take this money, and we'll go bankrupt. I don't that's in the farmers' interest, and I don't think it's - certainly not in the mill's interests. I don't think it is in the country of Belize's interest. We have just - over the last crop - put forty million dollars into the economy of the north through the improvement of these cane prices. That's very important, not just for cane farmers. It's important for the entire economy of the north. If we didn't have a sugar industry here, well, it would be a lot more difficult for people, I think. So, what we have said is yes, if you want to go to the sixty-forty, that's fine. But we will pay you on the basis of the published world sugar price because it stands to reason. How would be paying 60% of the benefit for direct consumption of sugar to the BSCFA if they are not contributing to its additional cost of production? That makes no logical sense. It's completely irrational and, in my view, simply a way of trying to exploit the mill."
